


To Err Is Time Lord; to Forgive, Human

by tenscupcake



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenscupcake/pseuds/tenscupcake
Summary: Sometimes, the Doctor screws up. Lucky for him, Rose always knows just how to set him straight. My take on the seven deadly sins.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 106
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroseofstone (Adams1422)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adams1422/gifts).



> I had intended to wait and post this all in one binge-worthy go, but since it's a special occasion for a special friend, I decided to post the first chapter! A few others are well on their way.
> 
> Also damn... has it really been nine months since I posted any fic. Good Lord that makes me sad. It's really frustrating that writing is a zero sum game for me right now - that unfortunately any time I spend on fic is time taken away from my novel.
> 
> But this idea, I just couldn't let pass me by. Partially because I miss these two so damned much, and I recently started a DW rewatch. (funnily enough, I haven't even gotten to Ten yet. The anticipation of him is enough, apparently)
> 
> Happy birthday Amber! I hope this is able to give you a moment of smiles during this quarantine mess.
> 
> NOTE: The title I just thought was fitting, I mean no offense to any religions out there by altering the quote.

~ _Invidia_ ~

“You’re sure you don’t want to come?” Slow footsteps clank lightly on the metal grating; he turns in their direction.

The Doctor doesn’t know what he expected. Rose could hardly wear the puffy coat and jeans he’s become accustomed to over their Christmas in London to a _wedding_.

But somehow, he didn’t expect this.

Not the heels, not the smooth bare legs, not the deep burgundy cocktail dress, nor the soft black pea coat unbuttoned over it. The green light of the console room is not flattering to anyone, he always thought. (Contrary to Earth urban legend.) But Rose? She’s radiant under it.

“Nah,” he says, wincing when his voice cracks. He hopes to the stars she didn’t hear it. “Got loads to do, get ready for takeoff tomorrow.”

“All right.” Rose walks swiftly past where he’s stationed himself at the computer, her rich floral perfume swirling around him like he’s in a cartoon.

She turns on her heel before she descends the ramp to the exit. And the way she looks at him, her eyebrows pulled together just slightly. Like she still hasn’t let go of the suspicion he is a Slitheen; that he’ll unzip his Time Lord skin and step out a big green monster (again, emphasizing his point green is not a flattering colour).

In short, like she still doesn’t trust him. Not like she once did.

“Next adventure, you ready for it?”

“Mm-hm,” she says, smiling, and probably anybody except the Doctor (and maybe her mother) would believe it genuine.

“Fantastic.” He calls upon the memory of his last incarnation.

This makes Rose’s smile touch her eyes, if only for a moment.

“Well if you change your mind,” she says. “I already marked down a plus one.”

“You did?”

“Well, it was back when you were–”

The end of the sentence hovers thick in the air between them.

“Right.”

“See ya.”

The door swings open. Snow flurries inside, melting as it hits the floor. And the TARDIS is empty again.

One of the TARDIS engines lets out a groan, most pointedly, just as the Doctor slumps into the captain’s chair.

_What?_ he asks, not bothering to say it aloud.

The Doctor’s logic is airtight; Rose needs time away from him. He doesn’t want to pressure or pester her to trust him too soon. She wasn’t ready for any of this, and she needs to accept him on her own terms. In her own time.

The TARDIS is quiet. Annoyingly, infuriatingly so. She lets him stew on them for several minutes. Every minute, more and more air whistles out of his supposedly airtight arguments, and he just feels more and more alone.

_If she needs more time with you to trust you, why don’t you give it to her?_

It’s a final, fatal pinprick: his logic completely deflates.

The TARDIS projects an image of the black suit she’s picked out at the front of his mind, and he knows she’s won.

No doubt he’ll miss the ceremony, but he can still catch the reception.

\---

The Doctor takes his place at the back of a short queue at the threshold of the door, tugging on his lapels - it feels oddly loose at the neck. It’s not often he goes tieless, but he agrees with the TARDIS’ judgment that a tie would only put him in impolite competition with the groomsmen.

The only attendees in front of him are couples. Three, to be precise: three blokes in shirts and ties (none in a smart black jacket, he notes – has he overdressed?), three ladies in dresses, heels, and strong perfumes (all a little stifling compared to Rose’s). Two pairs are young – about Rose’s age, if he had to guess. One – closest to him – is much older, someone’s grandparents if he had to guess. Of the three, it’s only the older man and woman who offer him greetings and smiles when they turn around to find him there.

“We’re the bride’s grandparents,” the woman announces proudly. “All by yourself, dear?” she asks, her hand over her heart like this is some sort of tragedy.

“My – er...” He cards a hand through his hair, trying to come up with some word to explain their relationship. “Plus one,” something pierces through his chest as he says it – disappointment? Isn’t she so much more than that? “She’s already inside.”

“Oh, I bet she’s just lovely, dear,” the woman says.

The Doctor tugs at his collar.

“She must be, going with a handsome fellow like you,” the older gentleman adds.

“Oh, yes, and so smart in that suit,”

The Doctor’s cheeks were already biting from the cold, but he’s positive they’re a rich shade of pink now.

“She is,” the Doctor mumbles out with a nod.

The doorman calls their attention. “Enjoy the party, son,” they both tell him in unison before turning away. Relief sags through him.

But something tickles warm in his stomach, even after they’ve walked inside. He hoped he turned out handsome, so to speak – for Rose’s sake. When he’d checked in the mirror, he thought it wasn’t bad, not bad at all. But Rose wouldn’t comment on his appearance – not beyond saying he was ‘different’ and ‘brown.’ Not exactly encouraging remarks.

But two complete strangers with nothing to gain just told him he was handsome. He’s got to try and remember that.

“Next?” Calls the doorman.

“All right.” He takes a deep breath. “Here goes.”

“Name, sir?” A tall, thin man in a tuxedo asks when he steps into the threshold.

“Ah! Rose Tyler.”

“Your name’s Rose Tyler, sir?”

“Nope! I’m her plus one. She went on ahead without me, I was running a bit late. Always fiddling with my look, that’s what she says. I’ve got some good hair, this time around, spending a bit more time with it than I’m used to. But better late than never, eh?”

The doorman strikes a checkmark off his clipboard, and failing to acknowledge anything else the Doctor had just said, he provides a canned response.

“Enjoy the party, sir.”

“Right.” The Doctor dips his head in farewell, and hurries ahead.

Must be some wealthy bloke, this girl is marrying; the reception is practically in a ballroom.

Everywhere he looks there’s plenty to dazzle the eyes – confetti, balloons, streamers, tables of assorted food, a busy bar and bartender, dancers beneath flashing multicolour lights. But no sign of Rose. A table scattered with cards catches his eye as he meanders the room, scanning each of the guests. Opening a few, he sees they’re filled with advice and platitudes for the newlyweds. He swipes a blank card from a stack, quickly scribbling a note of his own with a pen he pulls from his pocket.

_Best wishes,_

_The Doctor_

Least he could do, for missing the ceremony and all.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” the deejay announces over the speaker system, overtaking the music. “Married _forty_ years or more, come on down!”

The 70s beat lighting up the dance floor morphs into an earlier, mellower one – Sam Cooke’s much-covered 1961 hit _Cupid_.

A handful of elderly couples holding hands make their way – slowly but ever so surely – to join the younger ones already crowding the dance floor. He notices the couple from outside among the others.

The Doctor isn’t one for sentiment – no, not him. But watching the older couples hold one another, in part, it seems, so they don’t topple over, laughing together, his hearts flutter just a little bit, float in his chest.

But they sink just as quickly. _Growing old with someone..._

It’s that very moment he spots her, on the other side of the dance floor.

Sitting at a table, sipping a glass of champagne. By herself.

There’s no direct path through the commotion; he has to go around the edges of the room to get to her.

It takes him a minute to get around a particularly dense crowd around the bar. After being bumped a few times, turned around a few more, the loud music makes his head start to spin. Disoriented, he looks around to centre his compass – but his north star is not alone anymore.

A boy slides into the chair next to her – just a boy, can’t be older than twenty. His jaw is chiselled, his shoulders broad, his hair dark as onyx. He sets down a plate of treats he must have harvested from one of the tables of food. As Rose bites into something resembling a chocolate strawberry, the boy makes her laugh: a proper, head thrown back, joyful thing.

It steals the breath from the Doctor’s chest – not in the pleasant tingly way when he sees her in the morning for the first time, or when she smiles at him. The way it does when you’ve been knocked flat on your back so hard that you can’t breathe. His stomach lurches with nausea; he can taste the bile in his throat. The luminescent ballroom tilts on its axis, any detail that isn’t Rose and Boy goes blurry.

Boy wipes a drop of strawberry from Rose’s chin with his cloth napkin.

“Okay, my happily married patrons,” the deejay snaps the Doctor out of his haze. The song fades out; the dancers stand to give him their attention. “Clear out the dance floor because... I’d like to welcome up my _single_ ladies and gentlemen to the dance floor.”

In the chaos of cheers, couples returning to their seats, and single folk rushing to take their place, he loses track of Rose and Boy.

When he finds them again, they’re on the dance floor.

“Find a single partner,” encourages the deejay. “You may have come without a date, but you don’t have to leave alone tonight!” The crowd whoops and hollers suggestively over the opening riffs to Rob Orbison’s _Pretty Woman_.

The room shudders and flickers out of focus around him. He should turn away, he must, if he wants to hold onto his sanity. But he can’t – he’s paralysed. His eyes glued to Rose and her suitor.

The Doctor takes a deep breath – the tunnel vision subsides.

It’s not like they’re _dancing_. They’re just... dancing. Without much contact, either, and for that he’s thankful. Just sort of... following their own rhythm in close proximity.

It’s fine. Rose is just enjoying herself. As she should.

It’s fine, all the way up until the song quiets to allow the deejay to speak again

“All right, _everybody’s_ welcome on the dance floor for this one.”

The mid-90s hit _All My Life_ fades in on the speakers.

Pairings with failed chemistry dissipate back to their seats, or to more food and drink. Happy couples holding hands file back into the spaces they leave behind. But regardless if they’ve just met or are sporting wedding rings and thinning hair, they all hold one another close.

Rose’s arms wind around Boy’s neck.

Boy’s hands rest comfortably – too comfortably – in the arch of Rose’s back. His fingers wander.

Fire courses through his veins. Fingertips, toes, and ears tingle with it. The heat blasts from his mind like a furnace – he’s lucky humans aren’t telepathic, or they’d be throwing him outside.

Rose’s coat is gone, probably left draped over a chair somewhere in the room – more skin showing than he’s ever actually seen. He can too easily imagine what the testosterone-fuelled boy is thinking, barely freed of his teens.

The Doctor chokes back a growl before it can escape his teeth.

The room darkens into shades of red.

He stumbles into a chair, grabbing onto the back for support.

Splinters rain to the ground under his white-knuckle grip.

Oh.

The Doctor wipes the wood shavings from his palms on his trousers.

He has to get a hold of himself.

Jealousy, really? This is not a good look on him.

It’s not like he owns Rose. She’s free to dance with whomever she likes. Even to _dance_ with whomever she likes.

Street corners at two in the morning, finding someone to dance with at a wedding... he can never have a life like that. They both know it. What right does he have to hold her hostage from finding it herself?

In the moments he wasn’t controlling his feet, they’ve carried him someplace. He’s hovering at the edge of the dance floor, staring at the couple. His jaw and fingers ache with how tightly they’re clenched.

Rose catches a glimpse of him, at last.

Her eyes widen with shock, and relief courses through him. This nightmare will end now – it must.

But she doesn’t come to him.

She smiles, barely acknowledging his entrance, and tightens her grip on her partner.

Agony twists in the Doctor’s stomach.

His head swims, he can’t think straight, rage sloshing around in his mind, threatening to spill out and make a scene right here in the middle of a bloody wedding.

He thought he was less volatile this time around, less prone to violence because of Rose’s influence. But had he only thought so because, when he awoke from the fire of regeneration, the only thing that mattered was the woman standing across from him? That he had a new _purpose_ in life besides his eternal penance: becoming someone she would love, in return.

_Oops._

He’s not supposed to think that to himself.

But perhaps he’d got it wrong; perhaps he simply feels _everything_ more intensely this regeneration. Not just the fondness he has for Rose, the softness, but the darkness too. Anger and rage. Maybe that was the Bad Wolf’s real influence on him: a spark of human in his veins. A vulnerability to emotion he’s not hand in centuries.

The sensation inside him now, it’s... volatile. He wants to yell, to throw someone against a wall. Well, not someone.

Boy.

And that’s not what the Doctor stands for. For nine lifetimes he’s protected humans, not hurt them.

Really, what has gotten into him?

His feet take him closer as the song is ending.

Rose and Boy step apart.

“Mind if I have the next song?” The Doctor holds his arms behind his back, feigning decorum, but really just restraining himself from clocking Boy unconscious.

Boy balks at the notion; but Rose nods, and Boy reluctantly steps aside.

Nat King Cole’s _Unforgettable_ fades in.

Rose takes his hand, and it’s like coming home. The darkness scatters away, remnants of Boy’s face erased by the light.

Her other hand comes to rest on his shoulder; he rests his on her back. Sweet bliss trickles through his veins, knowing as long as he’s holding her, Boy can’t. He almost sighs out loud with it.

“You look handsome,” she says softly.

The Doctor’s insides fill with marshmallow fluff.

“Do I?”

Rose blushes; the colour makes his hearts sing.

He can’t talk too quietly, not over the music and clamour of other voices. Not as softly as she did. But it’s low enough that only Rose can hear. “Thought you might never give me a compliment again.”

This almost makes her chuckle, a smile and a soft release of breath. “Well.” She glances up, locking eyes with him. Searching for something. Or someone. “Got to earn them.”

They sway to the lyrics together, sinking into a gentle rhythm.

“What made you change your mind?”

The TARDIS’ words from earlier are still roiling in his head, things about honesty and trusting him, so he goes with the truth. “The TARDIS.”

Rose looks surprised, but he skips over it.

“Though I may not have,” he adds, “if I’d known you had another date.”

“He’s not,” Rose rushes out, a bit loudly; it turns some heads. She goes quiet, pressing herself closer against him. He welcomes it, wrapping more of his arm around her back.

“Who is he, then?” he asks, staring down into her dark mascara-adorned eyes.

“Mate from school.” She looks down at his chest, as though she wants to drop it. Her hand drifts down to the open collar of his shirt, playing with the top button.

The Doctor turns them around, purely so he can track down Boy.

He’s near the edge of the dance floor, watching the two of them with a deeply furrowed brow.

“Mate, hm?” asks the Doctor.

“Why do you care?” Rose spits back at him. She pushes against his chest, creating a couple inches of space between them.

“I don’t,” the Doctor insists quickly, looking over Rose’s head.

“Not like we’re a couple.” She rolls her eyes, looking over his shoulder.

“Nope.” He shakes his head, in full agreement. “You’re always the first to let the world know it.”

A chorus continues in their silence; their feet and hips continue to follow the tune.

“’M sorry,” she murmurs after a while.

“Don’t be.” He shakes his head.

Rose leans in closer again, an offer of reconciliation. Her head comes to rest on his shoulder, her cheek brushes against his neck. He mirrors her apology, resting his chin gently on her hair, tufts of silken curls that he knows took her an hour to get right.

They’re hardly moving to the music anymore, just holding one another. The Doctor can hardly remember how to dance, this close to Rose, soft and warm and cradled against him. They haven’t been this close since... well. Since his other body. It’s... different in this one. His hearts thrum faster in this body. His cheeks get hotter. His skin tingles beneath her touch.

“You dance like him,” she says.” Pleasure zings through him with the breath against his neck.

The Doctor freezes, dreading she’s talking of Boy.

But then she adds, “Or, like you used to.”

The Doctor pulls back, to look at her.

“Yeah?”

She nods, just as Nat is crooning the final words. “’S nice.”

“Song’s over, mate.”

Oh, that’s a grotesque sound, that voice.

The Doctor turns his head to see Boy encroaching on their space.

For the first time in all his lives, the Doctor is about to wind up his arm, to punch someone in the face, and to feel _so_ good doing it. The blood rushes in his ears as the tempest of anger swirls up inside him again...

Rose’s hands fall, and she takes a step back from him.

“Thanks for the dance,” she says. “I’ll find you for the next one?”

Boy takes his place in Rose’s arms.

He can’t stop Boy now; it was her choice.

The Doctor doesn’t agree to Rose’s terms, or speak at all. He couldn’t if he wanted to. Not with how his mind, and his gut, are in a freefall. Like he’s been tipped off a cliff, his screams lost to the torrents of wind whipping around his face. Panic hurtling through him, hope spinning away as the ground races closer.

He turns away, knowing he can’t let himself watch anymore. His senselessly vulnerable new hearts can’t take the torture.

Circling around gyrating couples, dodging drunks queueing for more liquor, and warding off attempts at conversation and even flirting, it takes the Doctor far too long to escape through the nearest exit door.

He sucks in heaving breaths as soon as he stumbles onto the street. Snowflakes melt on his tongue and in his throat, the icy air burns his chest, but it feels good. Something to feel other than the throbbing in his hearts.

Time. Time. _Time._

He repeats it to himself as he makes his way back to the TARDIS.

As a Time Lord, the word has always been his mantra. His fight song.

But tonight, he clings to it more than ever. He thinks it like a prayer.

Time, he pleads to the stars above, is all Rose needs. And someday, she won’t want to dance with anyone else.

The thought is like warm spiced cider in his chest. Comforting. Tempting.

But it’s also a dangerous thought. One he should not be allowed to think.

This look he’s wrapped in now, he knows it’s basically one big Christmas present straight from his subconscious to Rose.

But Time Lords and humans aren’t something you can just mix and match.

This _gift_ staring him in the mirror? It might be something he can never actually give her.

_She’s better off,_ he convinces himself. Finding someone else. He’ll only ever disappoint her.

Once inside the TARDIS, He drops below the grating with a thud, fully intending to break something just so he can repair it.

\---

In about an hour, the Doctor has already repaired the damage he’d done to the three parts he’d laid into with his black Chucks. He made himself a cup of tea, but it’s gone cold on the console, untouched, too nauseous to take a single sip. He’d spent half an hour staring at the console computer, watching the exterior camera for Rose’s return. And now he’s onto something even less healthy: telling himself he’s working to augment the screwdriver while really tormenting himself with what-if’s about the plans Boy might have for the rest of the evening.

Another thirty-one minutes pass this way, when he’s interrupted – startled, in fact – by a knock on the workshop door: he jumps.

Despite the knock, the door is already open: Rose is standing in the doorway.

How did she sneak up on him like this? He should have sensed her coming. Or better yet, the TARDIS should have alerted him someone came through the door. Poor security system, she is.

“Hey, I lost you.”

She’s still wearing her dress, missing the coat. Hopefully she hadn’t forgotten it.

The Doctor looks back down at his work, trying not to imagine what else she and Boy might have gotten up to in the last ninety minutes.

“I left.”

A beat.

“How come?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how he would begin.

It’s Rose who speaks again. “We never got that next dance.”

He finally looks up.

She’s wringing her hands, her eyes filled with a hesitant sort of longing. Just like the one he feels looking at her.

“Not much of a dance floor in here,” he remarks.

“Didn’t stop us before.”

Dancing, here? When they’re alone? Nothing and no one to stop them?

It can’t happen.

But the Doctor is already getting to his feet.

Music has already started to echo softly through the chamber: Nat King Cole’s _When I Fall in Love._ Exactly the same musician on the speakers at the reception while they...

Did the TARDIS know?

“Did you?” Rose’s question trails off, and she gestures vaguely to the ceiling.

The Doctor shakes his head. “She’s a clever thing, isn’t she?” He looks up at his ship with a frown.

But when Rose finds her place in his arms again, it doesn’t matter anymore.

With her huddled against his chest, her arms around him, it doesn’t matter that they’re surrounded by gadgets and wrenches and electrical wire. Or that no one’s around to stop them.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He hopes she understands: for what he said. For leaving. For not coming with her in the first place.

They drift slowly to the music, words like honey around his ears. Rose doesn’t respond, but she relaxes against him in a way she hadn’t in front of all the other people. Like for this moment, while the song is playing, she trusts him completely. He’s the Doctor she’s always known.

It’s more effective than any words he knows in any language to tell him he’s forgiven.

Somewhere deep in the back of his chasm of a mind, alarms are sounding loud and bright red. Warning that he’s digging himself into a hole he’ll never climb out of once she’s gone.

But he can’t imagine letting her go. Not now, not ever.

Too soon, the song is over, and the TARDIS doesn’t start up another. Rose relaxes her hold on him, but her hands come to rest on his shoulders. She lifts up on her toes, and presses her lips to his cheek.

And then she’s gone – heels clicking down the hall out of sight.

Only her perfume lingers, and the soft, pleasant hum where her lips touched his skin.

They say love is blind; he’s always rolled his eyes at the foolishness of the adage, scoffed at anyone who makes it ring true.

But look at him now, ignoring the alarms in his head. The blaring noise falls on deaf ears, flashing lights all but invisible to him.

When it comes to Rose, he’s as blind as any of those he once scoffed at.

He’s hopeless.

But it’s _Rose_. Somehow, being hopeless for her doesn’t seem so foolish.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am BACK y'all. I've been really getting in the zone with these two again. Here's hoping I'm able to keep this streak going. This chapter was a lot of fun to write. Thanks very much to Amber for the beta and encouragement! I hope you guys like it! It got a bit long - but I'm hoping by now you guys pretty much expect that from me.
> 
> Note: As I often do, I've wiped GITF from existence in this universe :)

_~ Superbia ~_

“Well, _you’re_ the one who insisted I _couldn’t_ have fractured my ankle!” Rose’s chest howls with pain at the force of her words, especially ‘you’re’ and ‘couldn’t’ – both particularly sharp stabs from her fractured rib.

“Because I didn’t–” the Doctor tries to get a word in, but Rose doesn’t let him.

“In fact, I think you said it was _impossible_! That’s your favourite word, isn’t it? _Impossible_.”

“By all accounts you shouldn’t have–”

Rose interrupts again. “Think you bloody know–” wincing, she clutches onto a lever of the console for support, “– _everything_.”

Three days ago, on a distant planet, Rose smacked her ankle on her bedpost – a dreadfully stupid but all too real injury. She told the Doctor about it straight away, but seeing she could bear weight on it, he waved a hand and insisted it could only be a bone bruise. Normally, or, before he regenerated, he would’ve run a slew of diagnostics at the first sign of injury. But he’s different now. Or he has been, ever since Sarah Jane and the Krillitanes. Distant. Even avoidant. It’s easy for him to be, with Mickey here now to keep Rose company. And the Doctor lets him; bowing out of gatherings to the bowels of the TARDIS to be alone more often than he ever had.

At her wit’s end with his cold shoulder, Rose requested a trip back home. As she and Mickey were walking down the steps from mum’s flat to return to the TARDIS, a sharp onslaught of pain in her ankle sent her tumbling straight into the metal railing. And, still too frustrated with the Doctor’s recent behaviour to ask him for help, she’d had Mickey take her to A&E instead. With help from a couple of X-rays, an orthopaedist diagnosed her with a fractured seventh rib and, yes, a very small fracture in her ankle. But she could hardly stay at Mum’s for a month while it healed; eventually she had to come back to the TARDIS.

As expected, as soon as the Doctor had seen the boot, he had a conniption.

And so here she was, still rowing with him in the console room instead of laying in bed. Mickey had long since abandoned the room; never one to linger when things got domestic between the two of them.

A swell of nausea creeps up on her – evidently not all of the pain medication had left her system when she got sick earlier. Worried it will happen again, seeing horrid premonitions of vomit on the Doctor’s trainers, Rose holds her breath, fighting to hold still to quell the pain and nausea with it.

“You _shouldn’t_ have fractured your ankle,” the Doctor insists. “You barely hit it!”

“Shouldn’t have done this, shouldn’t have done that,” Rose mocks, breathless. Between the arguing and her breathing more erratic by the word, her chest feels like it’s coming apart. Tears well up in her eyes. “Humans just get bloody hurt sometimes, all right? Not invincible like you Time Lords.” Rose clutches her chest, like it will hold the broken pieces together. But it screams in protest at the contact.

“You’re only twenty! First the ankle, now a rib? What are your bones made of, chalk?”

“Would you just _shut up_?” The words boil up with vitriol. “It doesn’t matter whether or not I was _supposed_ to. Fact is I did.” The room tilts to the side a bit as she pushes away from the console, intending to make a break for her room. The sooner she can abandon this futile conversation the better.

But before she makes it to the next coral support, she stumbles on her bum ankle. The Doctor catches her before she can fall, grabbing her around the waist to avoid her ribs.

“Will you at least let me look at the fractures?” he asks, exasperated.

“Doctor already did that.”

“But _I_ haven’t,” he insists. “I still can’t believe you went and saw a 21st-century Earth doctor. Of all the unqualified –”

“Least she believed me! Unlike _somebody_ I know.” Rose wrestles his hands off of her with another surge of pain. “I just want to go and lie down.”

He scrubs a hand down his face. Then sighs heavily. “At least let me help you down the hall.”

She wants to turn down the offer, not wanting him to help with anything. But she can also foresee how much trouble she’ll have limping all the way on her own.

“Fine.”

“Here, sit.” The Doctor guides her into the captain’s chair, and before she can ask why, he scoops her up from under her knees into his arms.

Startled, she scrambles to anchor her hands around his neck.

It’s not the first time the Doctor has had to carry her, but it is the first time _this_ Doctor has had to carry her. He’s hugged her, lifted and spun her around in his arms. Even danced with her. But never carried her like this. He’s so much thinner now, wiry and lean. The way he runs circles around the console, leaps and spins around in those trainers like he’s on springs. She thought this Doctor was built more for agility than power. She wasn’t sure he _could_ lift her anymore.

But he seems to have no trouble carrying her. He takes his time, walking slowly and careful not to jostle her. Neither his grip nor his pace falters, his breathing never quickens, there’s no sign of strain on his face. Is he simply good at hiding the effort, or are Time Lords just naturally stronger than humans? She rolls her eyes at herself for thinking it. There can’t be _another_ thing that makes Time Lords superior. Even if there is, he doesn’t need to hear it, or even think it.

When the Doctor had first changed, nearly two months ago now, Rose had warred with herself.

The man she’d travelled with for over a year was gone. Not just gone, replaced. She knew she had to take it slow with the replacement, or her brain might short circuit. Plus, it didn’t feel right to rush it, for his sake, her first Doctor. He deserved to be remembered, mourned. She knew it didn’t make sense – mourning someone standing right beside her. But it still felt like the right thing to do.

But she didn’t realise how hard slowing down her feelings was going to be.

From the moment he asked her if he was sexy on the Sycorax ship, he’d flipped a switch inside her. Like an arrow pierced through her heart by Cupid himself.

The Doctor was so different. Younger – not just in appearance, but in energy. In heart. And not that he wasn’t always charming, but this version of him perfects his natural charisma. He radiates it. The Doctor was never shy about hugs and holding hands, but this Doctor takes touchy-feely to a new level. Always leaning into her, bumping her shoulder, twining their fingers, whispering in her ear. And the closer he is, the stronger the temptation gets.

The closer they are, the closer she is to his face. His arrogant, know it all face. With stupid soft brown eyes that make her bones melt. Stupid pink bottom lip she’s had far too many dreams about kissing.

And when he gets close enough, she can smell him: books and fabric starch and aftershave, and something else underneath, something prickly and cool. It’s the same scent that lingers subtly about the TARDIS, only more concentrated. Rose has always thought was the scent of time itself. It makes her wonder if humans have their own fragrance, something unique that other species identified them by. They probably do – the Doctor would probably some cocktail of chemicals she can’t pronounce if she asked.

And _blimey_ when he’s close enough to touch – not his clothes, but him – the _electricity_ that comes off him. His skin sings with it. Every time they so much as hold hands, it courses through her – a current humming beneath her skin. Touching the back of his neck, now, fingertips burying in his hair, it’s stronger than ever. Like the very neurons in her hands are resonating with his, channelling something... it rushes straight to her brain, warm and pleasant.

Is it something telepathic? It would make sense for that feeling to be stronger closer to his head. Or maybe she’s just mad – wishful thinking make her feel things that aren’t there.

Rose turns away from him, trying to snap out of it.

A new rash of anger bursts through her – _why_ is she so easily swept off her feet by him? Literally and figuratively?

She can’t let herself be drawn in like this anymore.

Not after Sarah Jane.

Ever since the school, Rose hasn’t stopped thinking about her.

Being left behind, forgotten, her place aboard the TARDIS taken by someone else. Rose has since the beginning thought herself a little bit special – an invitation to make the TARDIS one’s home couldn’t be something that was offered to just anyone. Or so she thought. The past couple of weeks, she’s felt less like an invited guest and more like an intern. When will her time be up?

_Some things are worth getting your heart broken for._

Rose has had her share of heartbreak already – does she want to willingly sign up for more of it?

She’s young. A whole life ahead of her, if she wants it. Will this be the dumbest thing she’s ever done, letting an older man string her along, only to eventually cut her loose?

Rose isn’t an idiot. But is she being naïve? Is the Doctor taking advantage of her feelings for him? Is she some Time Lord version of a trophy wife?

He wouldn’t. He’s not like that. And, she thinks he doesn’t even know about her feelings. For someone so supposedly intelligent, he’s awfully thick.

She’s brought back to the present when the Doctor slowly lowers her onto her bed. Rose groans through some readjustments to get into a position for resting, if not sleeping.

“I gather that rubbish physician didn’t give you anything for pain?” he asks with a scowl.

“She did. Made me sick, I lost most of it.”

“Blimey, jeopardy friendly doesn’t even cover it, does it?”

“Are you gonna stand there and take the piss all night? ‘Cause in that case I’d rather you just leave.”

It finally seems to hit below the belt. The way his eyebrows scrunch together, combined with his fists plunging into his pockets, tells her he’s finally understanding how upset she is.

She knows she’s being harsh on him.

But he’d been harsh with her, too.

_How many of us have there been, travelling with you?_

_Does it matter?_

_It does if I’m just the latest in a long line._

_As opposed to what?_

As if he didn’t know what she meant. As if he was really that oblivious that all she wanted to know was that he cared, even a little.

She doesn’t like to admit it, not even to herself. She’d promised she’d stay with him forever. But in her low moments, she thinks about the possibility of a time after she’s gone – whether it’s years or decades from now. She’d give anything to keep her promise, but what if she can’t? What will happen when Rose is gone? Will she leave a trace? Will he ever mention her name? Tell stories about her? Or will her things and memories just be stashed in a box in one of the many storage spaces in the TARDIS? Will he repress all their time together the same way he repressed everything about his people?

Rose is sickened to admit that she isn’t sure. If he’d done it to Sarah, what’s to stop him doing it to her? He hasn’t given her that reassurance. For whatever reason, he refuses to, no matter the anguish it causes her. And so she will let herself be angry with him right now. At least until she feels better. Then perhaps she can start coming to terms with the new information. The new normal.

“What was it they gave you?” he asks.

“Oxy.”

The Doctor mutters something under his breath, rolling his eyes at the ceiling.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing. I’ll be back.”

He doesn’t close her bedroom door, so Rose assumes that means he’ll be back sooner rather than later. Gone to get something?

He returns in a couple of minutes, carrying a glass of water and something concealed in his hand.

He holds open his palm when he sits back on the bed – two purple pills.

“You trying to make me sick again?”

“You’ve had it before. After Roonalyevak.”

She shudders at the memory. “Ugh, that was nasty,” she says. She’d gotten a chemical burn from the water (which, to be fair, he’d told her not to touch), and though he had a salve to heal her skin in just a couple of days, she needed something to get her through the worst of it.

She swallows down the pills with a tiny sip of water, gulping as lightly as possible not to disturb her ribs. Then she settles deeper into her pillow and waits for the analgesic to kick in.

To her surprise, the Doctor actually does as she’d asked. The lights go out, the door closes, and her room is quiet again.

He’d really left.

The medicine does take the edge off the pain, but it still flares every time she takes a breath. And no matter how long goes by – feels like hours – it doesn’t get any easier to relax when every breath is painful. Like trying to sleep with heartburn, or a headache. It won’t really let you ignore it.

The medication, it’s not an opioid, something new-fangled that planet Earth won’t discover for another 335 years after her time. Perveltaran... something or other. Unlike its narcotic predecessors, it has none of the addictive or gastrointestinal side effects, but it is still rather sedating. Rose soon grows woozy, the shadows around her room swirl and appear to move; every time she closes her eyes, she’s on a merry-go-round.

But unfortunately, the medication does nothing to quell her anger.

And with that, it’s almost impossible to sleep.

None of this would’ve happened if the Doctor had just listened to her when she said she’d hurt her ankle. Nor would be acting this way, so persistently stand-offish, if they hadn’t run into Sarah Jane and she hadn’t drudged up all of these issues. Nor would they be in this position at all – caught in this eternal tightrope walk of avoiding intimacy – if not for him and his infernal Rules.

Rose cycles between waking and a fitful sort of quasi-sleep, occasionally gasping awake with a stab of pain from inhaling too deeply or turning on her bad side.

At some point in the night, maybe minutes, maybe hours later, a voice startles her into alertness.

“Rose?”

The bedroom door is still closed – had it opened? Or has he been sitting in here the whole time? Was he the shadow moving earlier?

She says nothing to acknowledge him, hoping he’ll assume she’s asleep and go away.

The mattress shifts with a soft creak as something – someone, rather – settles onto it.

“Can’t sleep?” asks the Doctor quietly.

“I am asleep,” she croaks, irritated that he knew.

“I think you’re still in pain.”

“Oh, so clever.”

“Rose.” The Doctor sighs. It’s too dark to see properly, but she can see movement in the shadows again. She knows that sigh; she can just imagine him pinching his nose, or tugging a hand through his hair. “Can I please look at your injuries?”

It’s not even a question, really; more of a command.

His hand comes to rests lightly against Rose’s. His skin is always cool, but feels especially so tonight. It’s soft, too, softer than she remembers. Someone who works with his hands so much, one might expect the Doctor’s to be rough and calloused. But they’re not, they’re smooth and gentle. Maybe it’s a Time Lord thing.

“Your hand’s soft.”

Rose hadn’t meant to say it out loud, let alone for it to sound so syrupy and full of longing. Her brain feels like the steam coming off a bowl of soup. Hazy and light, difficult to see through clearly.

The pain medicine – it must be the culprit.

“Ta,” is all the Doctor says. “But do you mind, actually? If I can see what exactly we’re dealing with, I may even be able to fix it.”

“Why didn’t you do that when I _said_ I hurt my ankle three days ago?”

“Because–”

“Or the two days after that when I insisted again? _‘S just a bruise, Rose, it must be_ ,” she mocks his accent even more poorly than usual, slurring all the words.

“You’re young. You could still put weight on it. All the evidence suggested –”

“All the evidence,” Rose mocks quietly. “Such a bloody know it all.”

“I _guarantee_ you I have more medical training and anatomical knowledge than any doctor you’ve ever–”

“Broke it when I was a kid. Did you know that?” says Rose. “Fell off the monkey bars.”

Rose nearly nods off again, it takes the Doctor so long to reply.

“That would explain why...” he trails off.

“Didn’t think to ask though.” It’s not as acerbic as she’d like, with the weariness of her voice. “Doctor I saw was at least smart enough to get my medical history.”

The Doctor is quiet, shockingly so, almost like he knows he’s defeated.

“I’m sorry.”

Hmm, now that’s a shock. She didn’t think he’d cave so easily.

“Should be,” she mumbles.

“Can I please help now?”

She planned to decline again, but the unexpected apology is quick to soften her resolve.

“Fine.”

The screwdriver buzzes briefly, and the room light fades onto a low setting.

“I just need thirty seconds, and I’ll be done.”

“I was worried you might be one of _those_ blokes.” Rose laughs. Well, it’s barely a laugh, more of a breathy exhale that’s follow by a sharp intake of breath at the new onslaught of pain.

But wait.

Heat fills up Rose’s cheeks. Why did she say that? That is not something she should’ve said to the Doctor. Even _in front of_ the Doctor.

She looks to his face, searching for signs of scandal or horror.

But there’s nothing: the Doctor resolutely ignores the comment. Like she hasn’t said anything at all.

“Oh, all right.” Rose summons the last droplets of energy to shove her blanket off to the side.

“Which one hurts worse?” he asks.

“Rib.”

The screwdriver whirs and buzzes through several tones and frequencies as the Doctor scrolls through its settings. Then reaches for the bottom of her shirt, lifting it up.

“Oi!” She flinches, her core scrunching up automatically, and she regrets it instantly. “Agh!” She slumps back down, bracing an arm over her chest.

“I’m not going to look at anything,” he says calmly. “I just can’t work through this cloth.”

She sighs. “Fine.” She sets her arm back off to the side.

She just hopes he interprets her reluctance as modesty, rather than panic that it’ll reveal just how smitten she is.

He gingerly rolls the shirt away from her pyjama bottoms and off of her stomach until several of her ribs are exposed. His finger trails a line along the first, and she squirms, biting her tongue so as not to make a sound.

“Right side is it?” His voice is low and cautious, even delicate. He seems to – and she hopes he does – misinterpret the movement as anxiety of more pain.

Rose nods.

“But not this one?”

She shakes her head.

To the next rib. And the next. She shivers every time his touch climbs higher, and only hopes she can pass it off as chills from the pain – that’s a thing, right? But he goes higher, closer and closer to her chest. The shirt rides up higher out of necessity, and Rose is suddenly acutely aware of her braless state. Her heart is so pounding so hard it’s rattling her ribs, bringing even more pain. If he couldn’t hear its beating already (which he probably could), he must be able to feel it now. Maybe he’ll still give her the benefit of the doubt – assume it’s nervousness for treatment. Who doesn’t get nervous lying on the papered-over exam table while a doctor is examining you? God, she hopes he believes that.

She tries not to breathe heavily, or too fast, but it gets harder with each one.

He avoided it as long as he could, but there’s no choice now. He lifts up the shirt again, exposing some of the soft tissue of her breast.

His touch is so soft, it doesn’t even hurt when he brushes the skin right on top of the injury. It’s staggering, how someone as powerful and intense as the Doctor can be so delicate. But she supposes that’s just it: his intensity applies to everything he does. When he needs to be soft, he channels all that might and focus into doing just that. As easily as he can become the lion, terrifying any species under his reign; he can become the lamb, the very symbol of peace. It never fails to take her breath away. Especially since he seems to reserve his gentleness for her, and her alone.

She nods, indicating he’s found the right place.

The screwdriver shines blue as it whizzes in the Doctor’s hand. The octave oscillates as he moves it slowly, scanning.

“Straining and bruising of the connective tissue. Several burst blood vessels. Fracture along the seventh rib, two centimetres in length. But it’s deep. Nearly broke straight through.”

“Could’ve just read my discharge papers,” she quips. She has to; it’s the only way to counteract the signals he must be getting from her body.

The Doctor glares at her as the sonic clicks off.

“I can fix it,” he says. “Not the soft tissue damage, but the fracture. Likely where most pain is coming from, especially when you breathe.”

“Do it, then,” she says. It’s so difficult to breathe, taking shallow breaths and never pulling enough oxygen.

But the Doctor just sits there, staring down at her chest, thrumming his fingers on the sonic.

“What is it?”

He sighs.

“’S gonna hurt, isn’t it?”

“A bit.”

Rose sighs, too. “’Course. How long will it take?”

“Five seconds. Maybe ten.”

“Go on, then.”

“I can put you to sleep first.”

“Just do it.”

Suddenly determined, he flicks three settings on the sonic, and doesn’t waste another second before firing. It doesn’t hurt ‘a bit’ as he’d suggested – it’s like hitting the railing over again. Like the fracture is deepening, breaking clean across the diameter of the bone. Then it shifts into something different, like the gap is being cleaned out with a vibrating tool, filling a cavity without novocaine. Sometime in the middle, his free hand finds hers, and she crushes it – her grip slipping with the sweat in her palm.

But then it’s over.

It’s only as she’s gasping for breath in the aftermath that she realises the pain hasn’t just gone back to baseline – it’s vanished. Soreness is there, like he said, bruising and tenderness, like she fell against a metal rail. But not the splitting pain every time her lungs expand.

“Better?” he asks.

Rose nods. It’s such a relief – she hadn’t really realized how rapid and shallow her breathing had become to accommodate the injury. She savours several slow, deep breaths, tension exhales from her tense muscles with each one.

“That’s the only break, is it?” she asks.

“Should be,” he nods. “If you can breathe easy now.”

“You can check, though can’t you?” she blurts without thinking.

The Doctor’s eyes bulge wide, his jaw going slack. He glances down to where her shirt has rolled back down to cover her chest. A lump rises and falls in his throat as he swallows hard.

_What?_

Why did she say that? She’s positive there’s not another break. She’d gone through the X-ray with the doctor. Can she still blame the drugs?

“I, er...” The Doctor scratches nervously at the back of his head. “No, yes, of course. I can check.”

Despite his discomfort with the request, that he must know there’s no other break, he agrees anyway. And _that’s_ the Doctor she knows.

Suddenly Rose understands her own outburst a bit better. The Doctor hasn’t let himself get this close, and despite the circumstances, some part of her is still reacting to the distance he’s created. Creating a space for him to show he still cares. Still listens.

He starts again where he left off, using only the sonic as a search tool this time, rather than her response to his touch.

The sonic buzzes low and wispy as he works his way past each rib, her shirt riding higher than it had before. He was clinical in his work before, but he seems to have lost touch with that stoicism now. He pauses every two or three seconds, catching his breath. His grip on the sonic fidgets like she’s never seen it.

One more nudge of the shirt exposes nipple. Now he looks away entirely, relying on the sonic alone to give him the information he needs. His cheeks flush with pink. He alternates staring over at the headboard of her bed and glancing down at her, like he’s waiting for her to realise she doesn’t want him doing this after all – scold and shoo his hands away.

It is at least a _little_ bit vindicating to watch him squirm. Maybe subconsciously, this is what she hoped for.

He makes a pointed effort to keep his hands as far away as possible while he scans the exposed region. Avoids it like a landmine, in fact.

And in a fleeting moment of weakness, Rose can’t help but wish he wouldn’t.

Her mind drifts, dreaming up images of this encounter in a different context. His body covering hers, her shirt gone altogether, somewhere on the floor. His lips on her throat, his hand finding where she wants it, thumb circling...

_Stop!_

Rose forces her attention back to the moment, reminding herself that she’s been injured and he’s just trying to help. She’s the one who asked for this; he’s not trying to tease her. In fact, that may be the last thing the Doctor would ever do.

She shudders to think what he would do if he saw what just went through her mind. There’d be a Doctor-sized hole in the wall.

Anyway, he doesn’t even deserve to be the object of these fantasies, not after the way he’s acted lately. Maybe even the way he’s acted since the beginning. He’s never exactly made himself out to boyfriend material.

She doesn’t know why it’s so much harder to resist this new version of him. Sure, the change made him boyish, thinner... cuter. But she hadn’t cared about that. _Can you change back?_ she’d asked him. Because none of that was _supposed_ to matter. She just wanted the man she knew back; the way to her heart wasn’t through a pretty face. Or, so she thought.

But he’s cast one hell of a spell. If she’s honest with herself, her determination not to fancy the new, new Doctor had dissolved shortly after New Earth. Her body betrays her, even now. Looking at his hair, wanting to comb her fingers through it. At his mouth... wanting to feel it soft against hers.

“All looks healthy.” The sonic clicks off; he pulls her shirt back down over her stomach. His eyes drop down to the sheet, still avoiding her gaze.

“Let’s see the ankle, then,” he says, almost chipper. Certainly pretending like he didn’t just regress to a teenager over a girl’s chest.

Though, she’s one to talk. Fantasising about him during the whole thing.

He makes quick work of the buckles and Velcro on the boot, but is careful to take it off slowly, without jostling or hurting it.

The screwdriver warbles again as he scans for the break.

“Well, it is small,” he says, sounding a little surprised. “About two millimetres, and shallow. But it’s definitely there.”

“Told ya.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

He waits for a moment, searching her face to find if he’s forgiven. Sincerity exudes from deep in his eyes.

But she can’t let it go that easily.

“’S just not like you.” It’s reckless, getting into a conversation about his behaviour, especially when it comes to her. But she can’t stop herself. Whether it’s the medication or just how close he is right now, maybe some combination, her word filter is blown full of holes. It’s letting everything through.

“Maybe not,” he admits softly. “Sarah, she...” he trails off, staring blankly out at the wall, rather than at her. Silence stretches between them; eventually Rose accepts that he isn’t going to finish his thought.

“Were you together?” she asks.

Still, he doesn’t say anything. Sadness etches into his face. His jaw clenches. But eventually, he returns her gaze. “Not like that.”

_Not like that._

It brings a moment of reassurance – their situations aren’t the same.

But then – she and him aren’t together like that either. The Doctor is always quick to refer to Rose as his friend. She’s just as quick to remind Mickey and her mum that’s all they are. Who is she kidding? The situations are exactly the same.

He said he wouldn’t leave her behind. She wants to believe him, but...

“You never even said goodbye,” Rose says quietly. “Why not?”

The Doctor’s face twists in pain, like talking about this is as painful as a broken rib.

“It hurts too much.” His eyes tell her he’s not talking about Sarah anymore.

And Rose’s heart aches.

She holds out her hand; he takes it automatically.

The Doctor’s eyes fall, staring down at their point of contact.

Rose is about to gently prod him again, to see if they can finally properly talk, but he speaks up before she gets the chance.

“Ready?” He turns his attention to her foot.

Right. That’s it for tonight, then.

“Go,” she says, resigned.

The sonic whirs to life again. This break is fixed much faster – only a second or two of sharp aching before it’s over.

“There we go. All in one piece.” The Doctor rights himself, sitting up straight, restoring some distance between them. He tucks the screwdriver back in his jacket. “Hopefully you can get some rest now.”

Rose doesn’t say thanks, or goodnight. Still thinking of his touch, light on her chest. She doesn’t want him to go, but she’s out of reasons to make him stay.

“You still in pain?” he asks, unexpectedly.

“Er...” Rose hesitates, wondering if she should lie and say she is. If it’ll get him to stay. “No.”

“Nervous about something?” he continues.

“Why?” she asks.

“Your heart’s still racing.”

_Oh._

Right.

He can hear those sorts of things. Or sense them? She’s never known precisely which it is.

His face is puzzled, like he has no Earthly clue why else her heart would race.

“Must just be recovering from it all,” she mumbles. It’s hardly convincing, but hopefully enough for an oblivious alien to let it drop.

The Doctor is quiet for a moment, like he’s listening. She tries to tamp down her stupid heart rate, but thinking about her embarrassment only serves to keep it racing steady.

He reaches a hand over, resting it on her forearm. A light touch, just barely stroking his thumb. Sure enough, her heart thrums ever faster. Why does her body have to be such a bloody traitor?

The Doctor lingers for a moment before an awareness alights in his eyes.

Then, with a smirk, he pulls his arm away.

Oh, no.

“What?” She pretends not to know.

“No, it’s... nothing.” He rubs at his eye, an attempt to hide the smile on his face. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

Before Rose can reach out to slap him, he’s already gotten up. She’d get up after him, but what’s the point? She’ll probably only embarrass herself further. It’s just not fair he has a secret pass to the workings of her body. That’s supposed to be a given of human existence, one comforting certainty – that other people can’t hear your thoughts or tell when your heart is racing or see every time your pupils dilate. But the Doctor isn’t human. He breaks all the rules. And it’s not fair.

“Bloody know it all,” she mutters.

He’s about halfway to her bedroom door, but he turns around. Of course he’d heard.

“Well,” he draws out the word with his usual theatrics. But there’s something else there, too. Something playful, even flirtatious. His lips quirk into that lopsided smile; it makes her stomach somersault. “I am glad you can’t hear mine.”

Before Rose can react, the door closes with the Doctor on the other side of it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO FRIENDS I AM HERE
> 
> I COME BEARING GIFT
> 
> Thanks very much again to Amber for the beta!
> 
> This fic is such a blessing to me right now. Even though this chapter is a bit angsty (many of them will be, I'm afraid, given the subject of this series), it still brings my heart peace. I recently watched JE and well, I had a rough day. Working on this chap patched up my tattered heart.
> 
> A sort of warning: the Doctor sort of veers into darkness a bit here. Though I'd say it's less dark!Ten and more protective!Ten. Though, don't let it be said you weren't warned.
> 
> Oh, sweet, sweet sin.

_~ Ira ~_

“You sure you’re okay?” the Doctor asks as Rose emerges from the shower in her pyjamas. Steam follows her out.

Rose nods. “Just scary, you know.”

Her face is a careful mask: exhaustion, fear visible at the surface, but something else hidden beneath. Something on the tip of her tongue, something she isn’t saying. But what?

And she’s still limping: her left hand over her hip.

She sits next to him on the bed, twining their fingers together.

“Want to go to sleep?” he asks, delicately.

“Yeah,” she mumbles.

He gently releases her, pushing to his feet.

Rose clutches his elbow.

“Wait.” Her voice is small; she gazes into his eyes imploringly. “Can you stay?”

His answer is immediate. “’Course I can, yeah.”

In an instant, a sort of peace drifts over Rose. Her shoulders sag forward, she lets out a breath she must have held a while.

The Doctor strolls over to the pink little reclining chair near Rose’s bed. But before he can sit in it, Rose stops him.

“No, I mean –” Rose pauses, biting her lip. “Up here, with me.” She pats the other side of the bed.

Oh.

This is a new request. She’s asked him to stay before – in fact, she did two weeks earlier, after the Wire – but he’s always sat in the little pink chair, left them both their space. Eliminated any possibilities of temptation getting the better of him. He thought she was all right with this arrangement, because she’s never asked him into her bed (in _any_ context).

“Erm...” The Doctor tugs a hand through his hair.

“Just ‘til I’m asleep?” she adds.

Oh, this is a bad idea.

Every day that passes, it gets harder and harder for the Doctor to deny that he doesn’t just crave Rose’s companionship, her smile and her wit. He craves her touch. Her hands and her lips and every exceptional curve on her body.

He’s drawn sharp lines between them for what’s appropriate and what isn’t. Holding hands, hugs? These are allowed. Discussing feelings, kisses? Those are not. But lately, the lines have started to blur. Hugs and touches linger. A few kisses have even slipped: first in Rome, later in Cairo. But he has done his best to wave these off as circumstantial. As but an unusual exchange of glad sentiments between friends. And of course, he layers on fresh paint, after these things happen. He re-draws the lines so they’re crystal clear again.

But it’s getting harder.

Cuddling up in bed? That is firmly in the danger zone. A cuddle could so easily turn into snog, could so easily snowball into a shag.

But looking at Rose turns his brain to candy floss. Somehow, the Doctor doesn’t even consider saying no.

“Okay.”

And before he knows it he’s unbuttoning his jacket. Releasing the knot in his tie, pulling it out from under his collar. He gently folds both over the chair he was going to sit in.

Rose scoots over to the far side of the bed, and there’s nothing to do but fill the space she leaves behind. He props the pillow against the headboard, sitting back against it.

She reaches for his hand, lifting it to her face. Holding his palm against her cheek.

“God, though, for a minute there I thought I might never see you again,” she breathes. Without warning, she brings his hand to her lips, pressing a delicate kiss over his knuckles. And she doesn’t let go of his hand, thereafter. She maintains her hold on it fiercely, like she might lose it, and the man attached to it, forever.

The Doctor slides down, dragging his pillow with him, until he’s eye level with Rose. And Rose buries herself in him. Her soft figure pillows against his. Chests, stomachs, hips nestling together. Her hands cling to wherever she can grab hold of his shirt. Her nose burrows softly between the lapels of his shirt, nuzzling his throat.

“I’m here,” he whispers. Holding her impossibly closer. As she settles into him, tension exhales from her body. She breathes slower and easier.

He presses his lips to the top of her head.

She responds in kind: her lips soft against his pulse point.

“My Doctor.” Her breath is warm on his neck. Oh, it’s music to his ears. A delicate symphony in his mind. _Her Doctor. Hers._

Soon she’s drifting. Hovering in the limbo between waking and sleeping.

The Doctor is glad he didn’t turn her down for this. The only temptation he’s got right now is to help her cross the threshold into sleep. To softly touch her mind and send her into lovely and peaceful dreams. She deserves that now more than ever.

Rose hasn’t been quite all right, since the Cybermen. Since the universe that somehow managed to steal both her parents and Mickey. Her mother, at least, she had gotten back. But it’s been hard on her. The reality of life aboard the TARDIS, of watching everyone and everything that was once part of your life fall away, it’s beginning to reveal itself to her.

These last couple weeks, he’s been purposeful about choosing destinations to lift her spirits, places he thinks she will enjoy. Hoping that, just maybe, if he can just keep the ever oscillating balance of their adventures leaning towards fun and relaxing, away from horrors and trauma, maybe she will decide staying aboard is worth it. Maybe she won’t leave like all the rest. Maybe, by some twist of cosmic fate, she will keep her promise to stay with him forever.

But so many of his little ideas have backfired. Elvis concert – Rose’s face got sucked into a telly. Cherry blossom festival in Japan – a sushi chef had knowingly sold her poisonous _fugu_ ; it took a full day in the infirmary to get it out of her system. Ancient Rome – turned to stone. Today, he’d taken her to Pang Ng Ko: the biggest amusement park on Earth in the 63rd century. He’d parked them about two blocks from the entrance so they could stroll up to the gate like proper tourists.

They’ve both always made a habit of stopping here and there, and today was no different: frequently they were briefly separated from one another, admiring things in shop windows and tasting the many offerings of street vendors.

Just as the Doctor had rounded a corner and the giant glittering sign welcoming visitors to the park came into view, he turned to nudge Rose in the shoulder. “Ah, here we are!” Only, it wasn’t Rose whom he nudged. It was a tall brunette woman who, with a look of disgust, quickly shuffled away from the strange man who bumped into her.

He whirled around, expecting to find Rose wandering into a store, perhaps approaching him to offer a bite of some new fried delicacy. But there were only strangers milling about on the sidewalk. He lifted up on his toes, his height allowing him to see over their heads. And there he spotted her.

Half a block away, her trainers and jeans flailed through the air, kicking against a capable captor, her fingers prying at the large hand over her mouth.

Coldest dread froze through his veins, but the white hot fury of a Time Lord melted it away.

“Stop them!” he screamed to passersby as he shoved them aside, the soles of his Chucks pounding the pavement.

But the humans on the street were oblivious, gawking at him like he was nothing but an average madman, without a second glance at the kidnappers. The hover van pulled out from the kerb, and all the Doctor could do was memorise the plate in the instant before its engines whined and whooshed out of sight amidst layers of air traffic.

A dark figure leapt from the shadows of an alley, knocking the Doctor in the jaw. He hit the pavement unconscious.

He woke to a violent shaking on his shoulder. Someone’s head pressed against his chest, listening for a heartbeat. A third lightly slapping his sore cheek.

He leapt to his feet, sending his would-be caretakers to the cement in his stead. Shouting Rose’s name into the crowded street.

“Mate,” one of the men who tried to wake him patted him on the shoulder.

“You all let them take her!” The Doctor’s anger erupted and spewed out at the crowd around him. “Humans, useless, the lot of you!” The people closest to him flinched back, horror in their eyes.

“W-we called the police,” the man stammered. “The bloke who hit you, he left this.” His arm was shaking as he held out a torn piece of paper.

The Doctor snatched it roughly out of the man’s hand.

There was a phone number on it.

“Someone give me a phone,” the Doctor commanded. Six were proffered up to him; he snatched the nearest and dialled the number.

A disguised voice on the other end of the line gave a currency amount.

“Where is she?” the Doctor summoned the storm inside of him as he yelled. “Where have you taken her!?”

The voice provided an address. “Bring the money by this time tomorrow, or she dies.”

The line clicked as it went dead.

The Doctor threw the phone to the pavement as he took off. The sound of the woman who provided screaming at him was lost to his ears.

Even with the TARDIS’ help, it was six hours before he found her. Six hours of vivid remembrance that human trafficking had reached a grisly peak in this century. Six of the most miserable hours he’d ever spent.

But the TARDIS finally materialised in the room she was held prisoner. Rose flew into his arms: she wasn’t hurt. Shaking, and bruised, but not severely injured.

Protecting Rose within his coat, he peered over the top of her head at her captors. He zeroed in on them as a beast to its prey.

He slowly loosened his embrace, trying to soften murderous eyes as they met hers. “Get in the TARDIS.” He spoke softly, but gravely.

But Rose did not go. Not without him. She tugged at his sleeve. “Leave them,” she begged.

_Why?_

“It wasn’t a request, Rose,” he commanded.

Still, she didn’t leave. Instead, she told him a story. _Their_ story. Her kidnappers’ story.

The Orovillos were not human traffickers. They were a family down on their luck, with a son who needed an expensive medical treatment they couldn’t afford, who thought Rose looked like a time traveller. Meaning she looked like she had money. They’d put a ransom on her head, the cost of the treatment: 250.000 baht. It was his father and older brother who’d carried out the crime, co-conspirators. His mother was crying in the next room when she found out what her family had done; she was here now, wailing for the Doctor’s mercy. The little boy, he was here, too, a plastic tube of oxygen in his nose, no hair his little head. It tugged ever so slightly on the Doctor’s toughened heartstrings.

But then he glanced back up at the grown man – the face he recognised from the street. And he bit back a growl from deep in his chest.

“That doesn’t mean they can get away with this,” he told Rose through a clenched jaw.

But then Rose had taken his hand, the press of soft skin against calloused, and somehow it had calmed him down. It had shifted his focus again to the young boy. Taken just enough edge off his anger to step back into the TARDIS with Rose, leaving the Orovillos unharmed. But only by a hair’s breadth.

The Doctor rests his fingertips gently on Rose’s temple: she’s out now, brain waves cycling through the patterns of sleep.

It’s good; she needs rest.

But Rose was also the only thing keeping his anger under control. The only one who could restrain him from seeing justice done. As long as she sleeps, she won’t be here to stop him.

The Doctor glances down to the purple splotched on Rose’s arm from a botched injection of sedative. The series of smaller, finger-sized bruises on Rose’s collarbone and shoulders. He’d handled her roughly.

The Doctor pulls away from her as his hands clench into fists, so hard his fingernails bite into his skin. His teeth grind together until they’re aching. A storm brews within him even stronger than the one before.

For a moment he fears that somehow he’s done something proper reckless, that he’s regenerating. Such is the fury of the fire in his veins.

He stands up. Knees trembling. Sweat beads on his forehead, slickens his palms. Rose’s room warps to shades of crimson.

The killer of his own kind. It’s stirring in his blood once more. Awakening in every cell.

Soundlessly, the Doctor leaves Rose’s room. He stalks through the halls at a punishing pace. The labyrinthine tunnels twist and shudder – the TARDIS trying to stop him.

But he reaches the console against her wishes.

He flips switches, throws levers, slams down the mallet on stubborn parts. Some of the more fragile components of the console break under the force of his anger.

He pauses a moment, closes his eyes, trying to rein it in. To remember how Rose had calmed him down, because she didn’t want him to do this. But without her presence, he can’t stop it.

The angel on his shoulder is gone; only the devil in its wake.

It’s all crashing in on him now. A funnel cloud churning in his mind, darkening the skies. Magpie: what had Rose done to deserve a death sentence from him? Nothing. And yet, he’d offered her up for the reaper nonetheless. And what drove a vendor to price Rose’s life at a few thousand yen? And this Mr. Orovillo – one life saved at the cost of another?

No.

Magpie is dead. The vendor – vanished in the crowd. But he knows exactly where to find the Orovillos.

The TARDIS tries to reach him again, pulling back on the reins of this anger with a delicate hand.

But even her gentle calls do nothing to quell the storm raging inside him. She’s but a tiny umbrella in the midst of a hurricane.

He punches in coordinates, setting their destination to the last place and time they’d departed from.

Sparks fly from the console as the TARDIS lands roughly, knocking him off his feet in protest. But it doesn’t stop him. He rights himself, throws on his coat, and storms for the door.

“Where we goin’?” Rose calls from behind him. Her voice is soft with sleep and innocence.

He turns; she’s standing in the archway leading down the hall, bracing herself against the wall. Her blonde hair is a mess of frizz around her head: a picture of perfection. And precisely why he needs to do this.

“Just making a quick stop,” he says, fighting to keep his voice cool. “Nothing important. You can go back to sleep.”

“No, I’ll go with you.” Rose is already convinced, holding open her eyes wide to wake herself up. Tying her hair up on her head, she wanders over to the captain’s chair, where she’d left a pair of shoes a few days earlier.

“You can’t.” He tries to say it calmly, to avoid arousing suspicion, but it comes out more as a snap than anything.

“What’s goin’ on?” she asks, concern filling her voice.

“Nothing,” he lies. He’s still bristling – he can feel the very hairs on his head standing upright with it.

“You’re still angry,” she says.

The Doctor retraces his steps back to the console, keeping a safe distance from where Rose stands. He should deny the accusation; he knows Rose doesn’t find it a good look on him. He should be able to shrug this off. He ought to be more the kind of person she is, the kind who tells Tommy to forgive his dad. Who forgives a family for kidnapping her.

But his nostrils flare as another lick of flame whips inside him. Leaning over a panel, he slams his fist down upon it. “Rose, I’m furious.”

He wants to send her away, command her to leave, not to see him like this.

But he cannot find the words. And Rose is not intimidated; she doesn’t flee. She walks toward him with all the calm confidence she would if he were skipping around the engines singing seventies hits.

“You can’t,” she whispers.

He looks at her with wide eyes: does she know what he planned to do?

“What?” he breathes.

“You can’t hurt him. You wouldn’t.”

“They took you from me,” he argues coldly.

“But they gave me back.”

“Gave you back?” he spits back with derision. “ _I_ found you!”

“It was for his little boy. You saw how sick he was –”

“They threatened to kill you!” the Doctor bellows.

“But they didn’t.”

“So we ought to do away with _attempted_ murder charges, hmm? Long as you don’t succeed you’re scot free?”

“They were never going to. He told me that straight away!”

“They are not innocent.” the Doctor delivers it like a criminal sentence. Stepping further away from Rose.

“And what gives you the right to decide?” Rose raises her voice properly, following him into his personal space and shouting in that throaty way Tyler women do so well. “Guilty, according to a judge and jury of one – the Doctor? You gonna be an executioner, too?”

“I’ve done it before,” he thunders.

Rose matches the Doctor for both volume and intensity: “’S not their fault!”

The Doctor stares at Rose in disbelief. It’s impossible: she holds the men no ill will. They’d stolen her and drugged her and bruised up her arms, and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t blame them.

But then – why should she? For who really is really to blame? Who is it that can’t seem to stop placing Rose into life-threatening situations?

Sometimes, Rose may wander off against his instruction, but he just as often wanders off without her. Lately, it’s become more clear than ever that just being around the Doctor beckons danger. It’s his job to protect her, and lately, he’s been failing miserably at it.

Suddenly, it all shifts. The torrent of destruction heading right for the Oroville household is caught in another current. It turns on a dime and barrels toward a different target. This time, it’s headed menacingly towards himself.

“You’re right,” he admits. It’s quiet, barely a whisper in the piercing silence that follows raised voices. “It’s mine.”

And so begins the rain. The first gusts of cutting wind. The grey-green clouds smother his thoughts just as they had when he’d burst to life in his ninth form. Thundering guilt. Howling shame. The spiral of self-hatred.

“I didn’t say that,” says Rose.

“Isn’t it? I’m the one who got us stuck in the parallel dimension. If I hadn’t left you, back at the Connolly’s... or if I’d checked your food for toxins... if I hadn’t let you out of my sight in a dangerous century.” By now, he’s heaving in shuddering breaths through clenched teeth. “None of this would’ve happened.” The Doctor picks up one of the several hammers hanging about, throwing it with all his might. The TARDIS bucks angrily when the metal slams against a distant coral, tossing them both to the grating.

“Stop it!” commands Rose as soon as she can sit up.

The Doctor doesn’t bother getting up; just crosses his hands over his knees and stares down at the floor. Letting the floodwaters swirl around and drown him.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he murmurs after a moment. “It’s like Queen Victoria said, it’s... this life... my life... steeped in terror and death.”

Rose takes a deep breath; it takes her a moment to answer.

“She was overreactin’,” Rose argues. “Tryin’ to scare us to make the banishment serious.”

That’s what he’d thought, too, at the time. But it’s not as if that was first time someone had pointed out how trouble seems to follow him around. In just the time Rose has been with him, how many acquaintances have they seen to their deaths?

Her mother is right to be worried. What good has he ever done her? How many times has he gotten her hurt, nearly gotten her killed, dragging her across the universe?

“I’m so wrong for you.” The Doctor shakes his head numbly.

Rose is quiet for a long moment, and he thinks maybe she finally agrees. That she might realise she can’t come to his defence this time. That at any moment she might ask him to take her home.

But then she’s crawling toward him. She sits down right beside him, her shirt brushing his coat, and places one of her hands gently on top of his.

It’s like a lightning strike. A blast of voltage straight to his brain. A blow to the chest that stops his hearts, makes him gasp for air.

Something happens that shouldn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Something that is not possible, not for a human.

But of course, Rose always finds a way to make the impossible possible without even trying, doesn’t she?

She looked into the heart of the TARDIS, absorbed all the power of the universe itself to save him and now she’s at it again. Forging a telepathic connection that crosses species divides, ignores incompatible physiology, shatters nine hundred years of cultivated barriers.

She breaks apart the locks, tears down the walls, and charges in _fearless_. She’d transformed a Dalek, the slave and very epitome of genocide, with a moment’s touch. And so she transforms him.

The rage of a Time Lord clashes with the peace of a human. And that anger, that hatred, the monstrous shadows they cast inside of him – like the Dalek fleet, they dissolve into atoms, dissipating into space as harmless matter.

When he took Rose’s hand in that basement of dummies, she gave him a second chance. A chance to restart. A chance to remember what happiness felt like. She’s taken his hand, this time, and done it again. Given him another chance.

“Don’t you understand, Doctor?” asks Rose. In his mind, her voice echoes as something ethereal, something bathed in a golden glow. Vivid memories imprinting upon the present.

His throat swollen shut, the Doctor can only gape at her in awe.

“When I met you,” she continues. “Back at Henrik’s. I didn’t have any plans. Not university, trade school, nothing. Just foldin’ clothes. Ringin’ ‘em up at the register. I thought I’d never amount to anything. I’d always be nothing.”

Horror grips the Doctor’s hearts, for nothing could be further from the truth. But still he cannot move, enraptured by the spell she has him under, the sheer force of will in the touch of Rose’s hand.

“All this, everything we’ve done. Planets and galaxies we’ve seen, disasters we’ve stopped or started. That’s not why I wanted to keep travellin’ with you. Not really. Don’t you see?”

The Doctor’s hearts seize in his chest. He can’t breathe.

“You believed in me,” says Rose. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who’s really done that. You made me believe in _myself_. You inspired me. That’s who you are, Doctor.”

Rose squeezes his hand tighter.

And his mind explodes.

The worthlessness, the insignificance she felt. A speck of dust floating through a ray of sunlight, aimless and invisible. And this feeling only worsened as years passed, festering under the care of abusive boyfriends, enabled by the sweet, although aspiration-less Mickey. Unseen by the mother who wanted to help her daughter follow her dreams but didn’t know how to.

Then there was _him_... a thrill of adrenalin, a flash of pure terror... explosions and boxes bigger on the inside and melting heads... but then there was so much more than that. There was light. There was hope. The encouragement she needed to get on her feet. A hand to hold. A hand that would pull her out of a rut she’d been stuck in for a long time.

“You don’t bring terror and death,” Rose continues softly. “Those are already there. You bring hope to the people who need it the most. People like me.”

Gratitude suffuses through him. Implicit, unbreakable trust.

Something else deeper, stronger. Something powerful smouldering in his mind and beating through both his hearts with a syrupy warmth. His eyes burn with it.

_How?_ How had Rose done this?

“I...” His voice breaks, he swallows down a lump in his throat.

What words are there to describe what she’s done?

The Doctor has come up with a million rationalisations for why Rose stays with him, despite the dangers and the Time Lord idiosyncrasies he knows drive Rose mad: seeing everything that’s out there, escaping a life she didn’t want. And lately, he’d thought, maybe, there were inklings that she fancied this body. That maybe she stuck around is just to enjoy the view, or simply held out hope that one day he’d buck up and pursue her like a good old fashioned gentleman.

But he’d never considered this possibility. That she stays not for the perks of the TARDIS or the face of a pretty boy. But because she really believes he makes her better.

Did she really not believe in herself? Did she really think her value so little, before they met?

She’s determined and brave and curious and compassionate... how did she not see it?

Rather than try to speak, the Doctor pulls Rose into his arms. She comes willingly, she doesn’t hesitate. She’d seen his anger, raw and real, and she isn’t afraid.

Rose makes _him_ better. He was a broken shell of a Time Lord when she’d met him. The mere possibility that he might offer her even the slightest repayment of this debt is a heady one indeed.

If heaven exists, it’s not a physical realm, a mystical place hidden beyond the universe. It’s moments like this, grace extended when someone deserves it the least.

“Rose.” He pulls back to look into her eyes. Golden brown, flecked with yellow and green. A tranquil autumn day reflected back at him.

But the Doctor has to know. How did Rose harness a telepathic ability she shouldn’t even have?

He reaches a hand to her face, cupping her chin in a gesture of tenderness. But he uses the contact to peek into her mind, gently, carefully scanning the surface thoughts. A few seconds confirm what he already suspected: there’s no awareness of what she’d just done. As far as Rose knows, she had only offered some reassuring words.

The Doctor retreats right away, not wanting to violate her privacy.

Best not tell her. That would only encourage her to do it more, to try harder, to hone her skills. And he can’t risk going down that road.

“Thank you,” he says simply.

Rose’s lips are parted gently, her breath shallow. Her eyes flicker down to his mouth, glistening with that same feeling he’d felt from her mind. His coat is bunched up in her fists, fingers twitching as if she’s about to tug on it, to pull him in...

And everything in his being is telling him to do it, to lean in and kiss her. That soft desire in her eyes, the pink hue of her lips. The temptation is stronger than the pull of gravity itself, tilting his balance towards her. Luring him in. The very air in his lungs floats out of his body, wafting toward her. The hairs on his skin prickle, swaying toward her. Like the stems of a plant bending toward the sun, so the Doctor bends toward his light. His sustenance. Rose’s eyes flutter, nearly closing with anticipation.

And so the Doctor pulls away before he does something he can’t undo. “Thank you,” he says again, softer, but enough to shatter the moment.

He struggles to his feet, and holds out a hand to help her up.

He does not linger by her side; he flees from that longing gaze, circling around the console to reverse the materialisation sequence he’d begun. Soon, they’re drifting peacefully through the Vortex once more.

Rose makes herself comfortable on the captain’s chair again, seeming once more at ease.

“Back to bed?” he asks, carefully sidling up to her.

“Meh.” She shrugs. “Now I’m up.”

“Well.” The Doctor stuffs his hands into his pockets. “What now, then?”

Rose rests her feet up on the console, her lips pursed in thought.

“You’ve still never taken me to see a meteor shower up close,” she says after a minute. “Like you promised.”

The Doctor is in motion before she finishes her second sentence. Resetting the coordinates to about 500,000 years in the future... 6000 light years that way... Rose’s tired eyes gleam with excitement as the engines groan to life.

The TARDIS in a more agreeable mood, it’s a gentle landing; Rose is dashing down the ramp before the floor has stopped shaking under their feet.

“Careful,” he warns, following on her heels as she throws open one of the doors. (Though, it’s not as if the TARDIS would ever let Rose fall into space.)

The Doctor pulls open the other door, standing beside her.

A bright ball of violet light streaks across the stars, trailing clouds of cosmic dust in its wake. It falls out of sight just as another surges into view from a different direction. And another, another... until all the black canvas of space is filled with the spectacle of arcing lights. Some are pinpricks in the sky, others giant, blinding balls of flame. Some mosey on their trajectory like aeroplanes across the sky, others blast across their field of view like rockets – appearing and vanishing in the span of a second.

It’s a galactic storm, meteors the precipitation of the cosmos.

“’S beautiful.” Rose beams at him, clutching his arm. Then she crouches down, perching herself on the edge of the TARDIS. Her legs dangle off the edge; she swings her feet joyously.

The Doctor climbs down to sit beside her. There’s barely enough room for both of them on the ledge of the doors, but it’s never stopped them before.

“How’s it that colour?” she asks softly.

“A whole solar system exploded in a supernova,” he explains. “That way.” He leans into her, pointing off to the right. “The planets there were rich in strontium and potassium. And so as they burn...”

The Doctor trails off. He curls his arm around Rose’s waist.

She rests her head on his shoulder. A flurry of smaller meteors twinkles like snowfall through the night sky.

“D’you reckon we could try for a different park tomorrow?” she asks

The Doctor hums softly. “I can think of a few. Long as you’re ok with me _never_ letting go of your hand.”

“No arguments from me.” The Doctor can hear the smile in her voice.

“I’m serious. I’ll follow you into the loo. I’ll get us thrown out.”

Rose muffles her laugh into the Doctor’s coat.

He tugs her in closer against his side, resting his chin gently on her head. So contented in Rose’s embrace, he forgets that he’s supposed to be watching the meteors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day may come when I don't cream telepathy into every single d/r fic I write. But it is not this day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chap is dedicated to Amber who really needed cheering up! And who also very kindly beta'd this for me in the wee hours! I hope you all like it. It was really tough to write and revise but overall I enjoyed it quite a lot.
> 
> Content/trigger warnings:   
> (CAUTION: CONTAINS SPOILERS)  
> Drug use/implied drug abuse, some scenarios that could be interpreted as dub-con.

_~ Gula ~_

“Is the meal to your liking, your graces?” asks one of the cooks (who the Doctor and Rose have been assured are paid for their duties) from behind an apron splattered and smeared with food. Her blue-speckled, orange face is creased with worry, her large singular eye gazing expectantly upon her guests.

“Ah, please!” says the Doctor through a mouthful of flatbread and spinach curry. “No need to be so formal.” He waves a hand dismissively before tearing off another large bite of his bread, mopping up more of the green stuff with it.

Rose rolls her eyes as she swallows a mouthful of spiced lentils and potatoes. Sometimes, it really is unbelievable how oblivious he can be.

“Everything is delicious,” says Rose. “We’re so grateful.”

“Oh, it is my pleasure, Mrs. Tyler.” (The royal family addressed them as Dr. and Mrs. Tyler after their introductions, but the Doctor didn’t bother correcting them. And so here she is, still Mrs. Tyler twelve hours later.) The chef offers a bow, bright blue lips turning up into a smile. “We owe you everything for what you did,” she adds.

“Oh, it was nothing,” insists Rose. She finds herself waving a hand through the air, just like the Doctor had. Damn, she’s got to stop picking up his rude mannerisms.

It _was_ nothing though, really. Sure, the result was that they’d halted a planet on the brink of a civil war, but all they really did was speed along their invention of the light bulb by about three days. As easy as clicking his fingers for the Doctor. Funny how time works like that sometimes. The smallest tweak to one person’s timeline and the whole of reality can shift around them. An alien bloke finishes his science project a few dozen hours ahead of schedule and thousands of lives are spared.

“Yes, brilliant,” the Doctor adds once he’s finally swallowed, swerving the subject back to the meal. “But you know what’s really impressive? The icing on the cake, the _pièce de résistance?_ ” That’s becoming more commonplace – the Doctor slipping into another language in one of his little manias. He picks up his cup of tea and lifts it up to eye level, as if to make a toast. “This tea! Blimey, it’s fantastic!” He throws back the rest of the cup – his third already – like he’s chasing down liquor.

“Yep, the tea’s great, too,” agrees Rose, shaking her head with a little chuckle at the Doctor. Rose sips another little bit of her own cup to emphasise her point, though in truth it’s not really her fancy. It’s a bit floral, and has a citric sort of aftertaste. She prefers more of the greener varieties. But she would never say as much, especially not to the chef. She rarely ever complains about their meals, no matter how exotic, and certainly never to planets with kind hosts. Very poor manners to criticise another planet’s tea.

The Doctor sets his empty cup back on the table with glee. “How do you lot make this stuff? What is that, hibiscus? Marigold? No, wait... Yuffal blossoms?”

“Secret recipe,” says the cook with a wry smile. “That is locked up tight by the royal family.”

The Doctor stares down at the dregs at the bottom of his cup with something like a lament. “Shame.”

“But all from local plants. Nothing imported.” The chef is proud of this fact, lifting up on her toes with her chest puffed out.

“Another round, sir?” asks a server from somewhere behind them.

Excitement alighting in his eyes, the Doctor whirls around and hands over his cup to the newcomer. “Top me off, good sir! Good fellow. Good lad. Good man? Suppose it depends how old you are.”

The Doctor looks up at him expectantly, but the server runs off to the kitchen without a word, shaking his head like the Doctor is the maddest person to ever dine in this room. (He probably is.) But then the Doctor smiles at Rose. His eyes crinkle softly at the edges and he radiates such a dazzling and contagious joy with that flash of teeth, and ah, right _... that’s_ why she puts up with all his alien antics.

The two of them manage to get separated as the meal ends and the royals disperse. The Doctor gets escorted out of the dining room by the young princess Natarya. It happens a lot, with him, and doesn’t Rose know it always seems to be the women he’s swanning off with.

Rose knows she shouldn’t let it worry her, because over time it’s become more and more clear the Doctor is never interested in any romantic advances on him. Quite the opposite of interested, in fact – more often he’s utterly oblivious to being hit on. But ever since he’s been in this new body, tall and boyish and handsome, the jealousy does creep in a bit more. If the Doctor she met was charming, this one is on a whole other level. _This_ Doctor could charm the pants off anybody in five minutes flat. But at the end of the day, Rose really doesn’t think it would ever actually happen, because she doesn’t think he’d ever actually want to. She’s still not completely sure the Doctor even _does that._

So Rose just waves at him as he’s being tugged by the elbow into a long hallway of the palace, her version of a farewell. He nods back at her, his version of ‘see you later.’ They’re staying together in one of the guest rooms, anyway (what else would they offer a married couple?) – so she’ll catch up with him tonight.

The dining room quickly empties, and soon the only ones left are her and Robert – a lower-class boy about her age who works in the palace – clearing the table. Rose picks up hers and the Doctor’s glasses and starts stacking their plates and silverware.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Tyler. I can get this,” he says, far too polite.

“Call me Rose,” she says. “And it’s no problem.”

Robert grins, soft and warm. Despite the eccentric colours and singular eyes, the people here are beautiful in their own way. If you ask Rose, no matter the shape or the colour of the face it’s on, a smile like that is always something beautiful.

“So, Robert,” she asks as they stack the dirty dishes into a tray. “What do you get up to when you’re not working?”

“When I’m not working?” he asks, confused.

“Yeah, y’know. For fun.”

“Oh.” Robert smiles, pleasantly delighted, like it’s a question he never gets asked. “I like to garden.”

“Yeah? What sort of things do you grow?”

“I tend the palace gardens. We grow all sorts of things.”

“Can I see?”

“Of course. Let me just finish cleaning up.”

“I’ll help you.”

It’s beautiful, one of the most beautiful gardens Rose has ever seen. Fairy lights twinkle in the walkways, illuminating blossoms and bright fruits on every tree, bush, and vine. Green frills poke out of the soil in plots here and there, their root vegetables concealed underground. Robert plucks one up occasionally and nibbles on it, not a care in the world that they’re all covered in dirt and scraggly roots. It’s so similar to something the Doctor would do, it makes Rose giggle every time.

Robert stops suddenly beside a plot of flowers, grabbing Rose’s arm. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” say Robert, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“What?” asks Rose, leaning closer.

He finishes chewing a bit of a crunchy root resembling a blue carrot. Then looks around to make sure they don’t have a wider audience. “These flowers are the secret ingredient in the tea.” He points surreptitiously down to the flowers, blue and purple buds on lilac stems. Rose inhales a breath and it’s sweet, like honeysuckle and roses and citrus and it does remind her of the tea. “ _Hudu_ ,” he says.

“Don’t tell the Doctor,” says Rose, teasing. “Don’t think he’ll leave here without a bag full of the stuff.”

Robert laughs along with her. “I wouldn’t blame him.” He hums, as though in remembrance of their taste. “Good stuff.”

As much as she enjoys walking around the garden with Robert, Rose eventually gets antsy to return to the Doctor. She wants to see if he’s returned to their room yet.

She excuses herself from Robert’s company with as much grace as she can. “I’d better go and find my... husband,” she says, trying not to screw up her face as she says that.

She navigates the stone corridors at nearly a run, getting lost on the way a few times. Twice, she has to ask directions from people she passes by. Three times, she attracts the attention of an armoured guard as she hurries past. Each of them holds a different level of trust for the strange pale girl in a hurry.

“Need a hand, ma’am?”

“You into some sort of trouble, miss?”

“Oi, how’d you get in?”

She’s able to appease them all with the truth, or rather, her current version of the truth: that she’d been separated from her husband and was just anxious to get back to him. The third guard is the toughest to convince, a white-knuckle grip on his axe.

But she finally reaches the door to their guest suite. The ornamental carved wood stands at least twelve feet high, and it’s almost a workout to push it open. When she closes it behind her, the whole room shudders.

“Blimey,” she sighs to herself, leaning back against the door.

The Doctor calls out her name from somewhere in the room.

She scans around – bed, chairs, bookshelves... the door is open and the lights are out in the en suite bathroom.

“Doctor?” she calls, puzzled.

A mess of brown hair pops up from the couch. It faces the window – he must have been lying there where she couldn’t see him.

“There you are!” He grins with Christmas morning surprise, and Rose’s heart flutters in her chest.

The Doctor’s hair isn’t the carefully mussed style he’d left dinner with – it’s wilder than that. Vertical. Like something, maybe someone, had mussed it up. She really hopes it wasn’t some _one_.

Come to think of it, it sort of looks like bedhead. There’s a cowlick just above his ear.

“Were you asleep?” she asks, trying not to smile.

“Erm, no. Was just, er... reading.” But he tugs on his ear, and he isn’t holding a book.

“Reading what?” she asks, sceptical.

“What’ve you been up to?” he asks, steering away from the topic of books altogether.

“Robert showed me around the garden. What about you? Natarya keep you busy?”

“Think she fancied me,” he says with a shrug.

“What?”

“Yeah.” The Doctor pulls a face, as though remembering something very unpleasant. It’s the same face he made as he spat out his first bite of pear on the kitchen floor.

Well, guess that settles the matter of whether he’s interested.

“Oh, am I glad to see you!” Rather than stepping around the furniture, the Doctor leaps up over the back of the couch with the ease of a track athlete. Well, he’s got the height and thinness for it. He rushes over to her, and Rose opens up her arms, expecting a hug. But it’s much more than that: he scoops her up from behind the thighs and lifts her into the air. She clings onto his shoulders with a squeak of surprise; wraps her legs around his waist as he spins her around with delight.

When the Doctor stops spinning, the room doesn’t. Walls and windows and furniture blur and shift, leaving only the Doctor’s face in focus. It’s mere inches from hers. Bottomless brown eyes, fair skin dusted with freckles, lips quirked in a

“You’ve been gone for ages.” His nose brushes against hers. His breath is warm on her lips.

“Feels like it, doesn’t it?” Rose’s words are breathless. Her head is spinning, and not just from the whirling they’d done.

She doesn’t quite know how it happens, or precisely when. One moment they’re still staring at one another, suspended a centimetre apart, eyes stealing glances at lips, and the next they’re not. The next she can’t see his mouth anymore because it’s pressed softly against hers.

Rose didn’t know when, or whether, to expect another kiss from him. But if ever or when ever it happened, she expected the same quick and innocent peck they’ve shared before. Something that could be explained and rationed away as platonic.

But this is no quick and innocent peck. They both gasp as their lips part against one another. Soft sounds of pleasure echo between them. It’s curious and just the slightest bit fumbling, two people who’ve never snogged one another before trying to sync, to learn each other’s rhythm and preference. But in its imperfection it is perfect because it’s _the Doctor_. He takes her breath away just by standing next to her and so how is she supposed to breathe or even think when he’s _kissing her?_

But. Hold on. Rose has to think for a second.

This can’t be right. They don’t do this. The Doctor doesn’t do this.

But it does _feel_ like him... like holding his hand, familiar because she’s been holding someone’s hand all her life, but _strange and alien and wonderful_ because she’s never held a hand like his.

Never had a kiss like this.

The Doctor pulls back slowly. Lips still parted, he looks dazed, eyes wide and glazed over.

“What is this?” Rose asks softly. “What’s happening?”

“Well,” he says, drawing out the word in a terribly Doctor-ish way. “I think we were snogging.”

“’Kay,” Rose flushes with heat, but tries to keep her composure. “And what brought that on?” she asks.

“I did,” he says. He looks as if he would shrug if he weren’t still holding her up.

Oh, the smart arse. For such a genius, he can be so stupid. “I mean, what changed? Why now?”

The Doctor’s forehead scrunches up, his bottom lip pouts out. Heaven help her, that bottom lip. She bites her own lip to stop herself from taking it between her teeth. “I dunno,” he finally says. “But I can’t believe I didn’t sooner.”

“We’re not a couple, remember?” She reminds him, though it’s not like he needs reminding. “Even though apparently everyone thinks we are,” she mutters, mostly to herself.

Everywhere they go, people assume they’re together. But Rose is never certain what role the Doctor will cast them in when they step out of the TARDIS. Sometimes he’s quick to correct people – to say ‘oh, we’re not a couple.’ But then other times, like on this planet, he’s quite content to pretend to be married.

But when they’re alone, especially aboard the TARDIS, he’s rock steady: they are not a couple. He is very careful about that.

“I know,” he says. “But can’t we _not_ be a couple and still do this?”

“What, like friends with benefits?”

“Is _that_ what that is?” He grins, and Rose genuinely can’t tell if he’s joking. “Yes, then.”

“I don’t know if that’s –”

The rest of Rose’s sentence is lost on the Doctor’s lips. He’s begging her to give in and God it’s so easy to give in, _too_ easy, to lose herself in the Doctor. To let the Time Lord stop time, to suspend them in this moment to float forever. 

But then Rose runs her tongue over his bottom lip.

And a realisation hits her like a bucket of cold water. That taste. Honeysuckle and roses and citrus – _hudu_. Something clicks into place in the back of her mind.

Rose pulls away with a smack.

“Rose, what’s –” the Doctor tries to ask, but Rose wrestles out of his grip and falls to the floor. She doesn’t quite land on her feet but she gets up quickly, scrambling back away from him until she’s pressed back against the door. He just stands there, waiting for an explanation with a blank stare.

“Th-that girl,” Rose stutters, gesturing vaguely. “Did she put something in your drink, or something?” she stutters out, shaking.

“What? No.” The Doctor’s face falls sharply. “Rose, what’s wrong?”

Is there something in the tea itself? But wouldn’t she have been affected as well, if there were? Though she hardly had half a glass, and he’s chugged down who knows how many.

“How much of that tea did you have?” she asks.

“I dunno,” he says, shrugging. “Why?”

“Just give me an estimate,” she insists. “How much?”

“Er... six cups? Maybe seven?”

“Six cups!?” she echoes, stunned.

“Oh!” The Doctor leaps into the air as in some grand revelation, completely unconcerned with her distress. “We should go and get some more!”

Well, Rose knew this was too good to be true. It’s got to be that tea. Those hudu flowers – they’re some sort of drug or poison or something.

“You know what?” says Rose carefully. “That’s a great idea. I’ll go and get some more.”

“Oh, no, don’t go!” The Doctor’s excitement twists into disappointment. “You just got back.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll only take me a minute. You just wait here.”

“But –” the Doctor steps forward, reaching out an arm toward her.

“Promise me you’ll wait here!” she commands. She doesn’t want him wandering through the palace picking up any more potential suitors.

The Doctor crosses his arms, but nonetheless closes his mouth. It’s practically a pout. One that would be much harder to resist if he weren’t drugged.

Rose backtracks through the stone hallways at a full sprint. The guards she’d passed the first time don’t say anything this time around, expecting her to always be in a rush now, she supposes.

“Oh, thank God,” Rose mutters to herself when she reaches the garden and sees Robert is still out there.

“Rose, you’re back!” he greets her warmly. “Did you find the Doctor?” he asks.

“Robert, listen,” she says, still huffing from the journey. “That hudu stuff. What’s so special about it?

“Oh.” He exhales, some tension leaving his shoulders, like he’d expected something much worse from the look in her eyes. “It’s a powerful plant.”

“But what is it?” Rose asks, emphasizing the last two words.

“Too expensive for most people to afford.” Robert chuckles, like it’s supposed to be a joke. But Rose doesn’t laugh.

“But the royals, they pay it,” says Rose. “They gave it to us at dinner. Why?”

“Oh.” He exhales, tension leaving his shoulders. “The petals are psychotropic.” Rose’s stomach turns sickeningly. “That’s why they’re such a delicacy.”

“Psychotropic how?” she asks, fumbling over her words. “An aphrodisiac, is it?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. More like alcohol, maybe crossed with a sort of sedative. Lowers inhibitions, makes you feel relaxed. You know, just takes all your worries away. Can make you a bit sleepy, though.”

“And it affects all species?” she asks.

Robert shrugs. “That we know of.”

“What, so he’s high on bloody Valium?” she asks through her teeth, not really to Robert, but at the supreme unfairness of the universe.

“Huh?” asks Robert, the word unfamiliar to him.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “How long’s it last?” she asks.

“The effects wear off in a few hours.”

Rose stares out at the garden a few moments, reeling to try to process this. She’d thought for sure he’d been dosed with some alien Viagra that made him go bananas, and maybe one-eyed orange girls just weren’t his type. But it’s not an aphrodisiac after all... just a relaxant.

So if the Doctor just had a treatment for his 900 years’ worth of relationship anxiety, this would be their life on the TARDIS? Snogging to their hearts’ content?

It’s taken Rose a long time to even admit to herself that she even _wants_ to snog him. For a time, she felt almost... guilty at how quickly she’d been charmed by this new him. How quickly those new brown eyes made her melt, that new voice in her ear made her pulse quicken. And the Doctor had been so careful at the beginning, tiptoeing around their usual boundaries. But ever since Scotland, he’s been so overtly tactile. Finding any excuse to put his arm around her, to lean over her shoulder, to nudge her leg with his. Not to mention that anything calls for a hug now.

Rose has been considering for a while that perhaps their acquaintances were right from the beginning – she and the Doctor would be right together.

But she hasn’t wanted to get her hopes up that when the Doctor changed, he might have also... softened. Just enough that he might be considering that, too.

She definitely never imagined the answer would come from a bloody flower.

When Rose returns to the guest suite, the Doctor is staring out one of the big arched windows. The sun has almost finished setting behind the mountains, purple and orange and red painted across the sky, reflecting off the lake below.

His head turns at the sound of the door closing. “I knew you weren’t going to get more tea,” he says, almost a reproach.

“I got interrupted, that’s all,” she lies. She cuts across the room to sit in one of the armchairs by the window. The Doctor turns, taking the one adjacent. That’s when she sees a new cup in his hand, no doubt full of the stuff. “Looks like you found some anyway.” She tries not to let anger leach into her tone, but doesn’t do a very good job of it.

The Doctor sets down his cup on a small table between the two chairs, beside to a purple potted plant. Rose tilts it toward her and finds it already empty. She rolls her eyes, slumping further into her chair.

“Rose.”

“Mm,” she mumbles, staring out at the fading colours of sunset.

“Did you like it?” The Doctor leans over his armrest, desperate for her attention.

She glances over at him. “The tea?”

He shakes his head. “The kiss.”

Rose just about bursts into flame.

This again? She really hoped that particular impulse would have passed by now. Rose rests her forehead on her hand, hiding the pink she can feel burning on her cheeks. “Erm...”

She can’t tell the truth. As soon as he’s off the influence of this tea, he’ll surely realise it was a big mistake and never want to discuss it again. Anything she says can and will be used as ammunition against her when he’s sobered up again. But there are a million words of affirmation waiting on the tip of her tongue, exclamations and praises of how magnificent a snog it was, ready to burst free as soon as she opens her mouth again.

She swallows hard. The truth aches on its way down.

“I dunno.” The lie tries to strangle her on its way out.

“You didn’t,” says the Doctor. Rose stops picking at loose threads on her chair for long enough to look at him: he looks devastated. Can’t-find-her-statue-in-Rome-level devastated.

Temptation swells up in Rose’s chest. Normally she would do anything to make a face like that go away. To make that gorgeous smile of his reappear. But just as she couldn’t in that temple, she can’t now.

Lights flickers in Rose’s periphery. Outside, glowing paper lanterns set sail from the lakeshore, lighting up the twilight. The dark water ripples with their yellow and orange reflections as they drift through the sky.

Right: they have a standing invitation to the festival tonight. A celebration to mark the end of the strife.

“Look,” she says, getting to her feet. “The festival’s starting. Let’s head out there, yeah?”

The Doctor stands, too. Too quickly. He loses his footing before he’s gone two steps, tumbling to the floor with an ‘oof!’

“Steady on, Doctor!” Rose drops to her knees onto the floor next to him, examining him for injury. “Robert didn’t say it would make you disoriented,” she mutters.

“What would?” he asks.

Rose sighs. How can he be so thick? He’s normally the first to detect weird brain altering chemicals, always tasting books and blood and walls and telling her precisely what’s in them... how is this thing going undetected right under his nose? Right on his tongue, no less?

“Right.” The Doctor slowly gets to his feet, using Rose for support. “What we’re staying for isn’t it? We wouldn’t want to miss it. Do you they’ll be serving tea down there?”

They’ve barely been here an hour, and this is already the fourth time Rose has lost track of the Doctor.

Rose weaves through the crowd of hats and costumes and face masks, passes by street merchants beckoning for her business. Smells of roasting meats and frying sweets are heavy in the air. The skinny lanes between stalls are a chaos of two-way traffic, people bumping and brushing one another constantly. Music keeps a steady beat through the chaos, the thumping beat of nearby drummers and wind instruments echoing through the night. Beyond the markets are competitions – the more athletic aliens heaving stones across fields and racing back and forth between flagpoles. At the other end of the lake, there’s dancing – professionals perform on stages as adults and kids alike jump around to the music. Some couples twirl happily around one another.

If he weren’t inebriated, or better yet, if she even knew where he was, Rose might ask the Doctor to dance with her.

It’s not uncommon for them to be separating during bustling events like this, but it is infinitely more annoying when she’s trying to keep an eye on him.

She finally spots his hair sticking out above a throng gathered around a solo break dancer. She shoves her way through the crowd, for the moment forgetting about decorum.

Every time she’s found him so far he’s managed to get his hands on more of that bloody tea, and this is no exception. He’s watching the spectacle with another cup in his hand, the rim to his lips.

Rose bites back a growl. The timer is reset to zero again; more hours tacked on to the end of this night of absurd babysitting. Her patience is wearing thin.

She yanks on the Doctor’s coat sleeve, tearing the cup away from his mouth. As he’s jostled, a wave of the brown stuff sloshes over the rim and onto his coat.

Anger flashes briefly in his eyes, his mouth half open to reprimand the stranger that had bumped him, but when he turns to find Rose, it vanishes. He beams at her, the slight forgotten. “Rose, there you are!”

“Will you stop wandering off?” she says, less a question and more a command.

“Ha! Me, wander off? I say that to you all the time, don’t I? Well, I used to anyway. You never listened, did you? ‘Don’t wander off, Rose,’ I said.” His impersonation of his former self is uncanny. “Next thing you know you’re dangling from a barrage balloon in the middle of a German air raid, thinking ‘Hmm, I really should have listened to the Doctor.’”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Right, okay.”

With a grin of victory, the Doctor raises the cup to his lips again.

Rose wrenches it from his hand, tossing the contents to the dirt.

“What’d you do that for!?” he whinges.

“Honestly, who keeps giving you this?” she asks, ignoring him. “I don’t see anyone else with it.”

“Have you got something against this tea?” he asks, utter bemusement on his face.

“No,” she lies through her teeth.

“Have I done something wrong, then?”

Rose sighs heavily, resting her head in her hands. “No.”

The Doctor does not seem appeased. “Is it because I kissed you? I mean, I know it was a bit –”

“It’s not that, all right!?” she exclaims.

“All right,” he says, holding up his hands as in surrender. “Blimey. Try to ask a woman what’s wrong,” he mutters.

“Sorry,” says Rose, instantly regretting the outburst.

It’s getting darker: the last of lanterns have either landed on the far side of the lake, or else drifted off into the distance. Merchants are snuffing out their lanterns. People are corralled through the market en masse, and Rose and the Doctor have no choice but to move with the crowd.

“Come on,” says the Doctor, grabbing her hand.

The traffic moves toward the only substantial source of light that remains: the expanse of grass used earlier for sporting events. Torch-bearers are speckled through the field. Rather like cattle entering a field, the crowd of people disperses, spreading to fill the space. They set out blankets and sit or lie on the ground, staring up at the sky like they’re waiting for something.

“What’s going on?” asks Rose. “What are they all waiting for?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer. They weave for a bit longer between the clusters of people sprawled out on the grass. Finding the first empty patch of land big enough, the Doctor shrugs out of his coat, spreads it out on the dark grass, and settles down onto it. She crumples down next to him without argument, propping up on her elbow.

Even though it’s dark, and this grass is red, not green, she’s still reminded fondly of New Earth.

“I really am sorry,” she offers. It’s not his fault he got drugged, after all. Though it is a bit his fault he keeps taking more of it. And that he’s too thick to realise he’s high.

“Why are you upset?” asks the Doctor softly.

“I...” Rose fumbles for an answer.

Suddenly it gets darker. Light sources vanish around them. One by one the torches in the vast field snuff out.

Like a theatre when the lights go down, a cheer rolls through the dispersed crowd at the intensified darkness. Then a hush falls over them, the clamour of a crowd reduced to soft murmurs and the crunching of snacks.

“I always thought, well,” says the Doctor, keeping his voice low. He turns on his side, mirroring her position. “That maybe you wanted to kiss me, too.”

Oh, well, now he’s gone and done it. Lying by omission is one thing, but lying to his face, about her _feelings for him_ , no less, is something Rose simply cannot bring herself to do. “I did. Okay?”

“You did?” he asks. It’s so dark, she can’t even see his lips move. Just his dark eyebrows lifting up on his forehead.

“It just... it wasn’t... right,” says Rose, grimacing at her own phrasing.

The Doctor is quiet for a moment. “Then... can I try again?”

“What?” she breathes.

“I’ll make it right this time.”

The Doctor inches closer to her. The starlight twinkles in his eyes. She can smell his aftershave, the floral notes of the tea. Just the smallest tilt of her head and her mouth would brush against his...

“If you want,” he adds, a whisper of breath on her lips.

She should stop him. Say she doesn’t want him to. But her body strains against her will. As neither rock nor air nor even light can resist the pull of gravity, Rose can’t resist the pull of the Doctor. Invisible but unrelenting, a force unrivalled in the universe. She’s been in orbit around him since the day they met, since _Forget me, Rose Tyler._ Closer and closer, she’s circled.

A sharp whistle pierces the silence. A second. A third. Fading as they gain altitude.

_Pop, pop, pop!_ And debris crackles as it falls, a mere taste of what’s to come.

The Doctor pulls her in close by the small of her back. Hips, stomach, chest flush against hers.

Another whistle sings through the sky.

She was always destined for this, wasn’t she? To fall. To crash into him.

Their lips collide.

_BOOM._

Rose gasps in surprise, at the thrill that rockets through her. An explosion of tension manifest in the sky. Sparks rain down from the sky, sizzling, and it’s like she can _feel_ them: light and heat coursing electric through her veins.

The Doctor, he has these moments, where a chink in his hardened armour breaks away, and the real him shines through. Soft and vulnerable. Sometimes it’s in his eyes, the radiance in them when he smiles at her from the surface of a new planet. Sometimes it’s in his hand, his thumb brushing against hers when she’s afraid. Rarer, it’s from his lips. The achingly tender way he says her name when he’s proud of her.

But now it’s like all that armour isn’t just chipped, it’s gone. Stripped away. And all that’s left is the Doctor as he is. Maybe the Doctor as he wishes he could be.

His kiss is so soft, but so focused, such certainty in it, like every brush of his lips is a word of a message he desperately needs to tell her. He touches her as he would a sacred artefact of a lost alien race. Holds her like he intends to never let her go.

Her heart and the fireworks pound in her chest, indistinguishable.

Her eyes are closed, but vivid colours still burst behind her eyes.

A string of explosions overlap in the sky like they’re competing which can be loudest. The crowd hollers, and it feels like a celebration. Like everyone is cheering them on. Because they’ve finally done it, they’ve knocked down the barriers keeping them apart and stopped pretending they aren’t mad about each other and finally, _finally_ –

But... they haven’t.

Rose has, but the Doctor hasn’t.

At least, the _sober_ Doctor hasn’t.

So Rose has to stop it.

She tries to break away, but he resists. An opposing pull for each push, he holds on tighter. One hand on his chest, she pushes harder; they both gasp with loss as they’re wrenched apart.

She curls up into a ball, knees tucked into her chest like it will stop her heart aching. Her lips hum with remnants of his kiss, nerves unable to calm down, to stop firing. The taste of tea lingers on her tongue; somehow it’s much more pleasant on the Doctor’s mouth than it was from a glass.

The Doctor calls her name in between bursts in the sky. It takes every ounce of her strength to hide her mouth in her arm, to stop it from finding the Doctor again. She wants so badly to comfort him, to reassure him she’s not rejecting him, that she never would if he weren’t in an altered state of mind.

He pulls himself up to sit beside her; she allows herself a glance over to him. He mirrors her position, but his cheek rests on his knees, more interested in her than in the light show. Lights burst and flicker in his eyes in time to the explosions in the sky. The colours dance on his fair skin– green, red, blue. His hair is a technicolour mess – sticking out in all directions – and she realises it must have been her doing. Her fingers twitch to touch it again, to mess it up even more. She closes them into tight fists against her shins.

With a groan, Rose tilts her head down, burying her face in her arms. Thinking there’s something wrong, the Doctor gently rubs her back. Murmurs reassurances that for some reason the fireworks don’t drown out.

Oh, what has she done?

The haze of smoke hasn’t even faded from the sky when Rose gets to her feet. “We should get back,” she says. “Get some sleep.”

“All right,” the Doctor agrees, getting unsteadily to his feet. Sliding on his coat.

Torches and lanterns are re-lit. The crowd rises slowly, stretching, gathering their things, chatting.

She would insist they go back to the TARDIS, but it’s an hour walk she isn’t sure the Doctor would survive at this point.

He lags behind her, tripping over his own feet, slowing down to talk to any person who so much as smiles at him. He even crouches down to greet a squirrel that happens to wander too close (well, it looks like a squirrel, but she supposes it probably isn’t). That, and he keeps stopping at random plants along the path, picking off berries and flowers to taste. It takes them about ten times longer to get back to the palace than Rose had hoped.

When they finally return to their suite, Rose sits him down in the chair by the window, with strict orders to stay put while she goes to freshen up. She hasn’t had a moment to collect herself for hours.

Teeth brushed and face washed, she emerges from the loo breathing a little easier. But of course, the chair she’d left the Doctor in is empty.

The whole room is empty.

She runs for the door in a panic – but realises it’s already ajar.

She can hear his voice just out in the hall – it’s heading this way.

Such a cheerful lilting thing, that voice is. Her panic subsides in an instant. It sounds like he’s thanking someone profusely for something, through she doesn’t know what. There’s another disembodied voice out there, but she doesn’t recognise it.

When he steps through the door, her improved mood takes a nosedive. There’s a cup in each hand, and he’s slurping back the contents of one of them.

“Mm!” he hums through a mouth full of tea, his eyebrows perking up when he sees her. He gulps it down. “Finally, you’re finished. Brought you some.” He holds out a second cupful of tea for her.

Rose can’t help it this time. A shout bursts out of her.

“Oh my _God_!”

Alarmed, the Doctor splutters out his tea. “What’s wrong!?” He scans around for signs of danger with wide eyes.

“What is it with you and this bloody tea!?” Rose storms over to him and knocks both cups out of his hands. They clatter to the floor in pieces, splashing puddles of tea all over the stone.

Something finally seems to get through to the Doctor. His forehead scrunches up, his eyebrows pinch together, his upper lip curls like an angry little dog. “What is it with _you_ and this bloody tea!?” he echoes back, meeting her anger with his own. “What the hell was that for?”

“Do you seriously not get it?” she gestures manically with her hands.

“What are y –” The Doctor begins in a shout, but he stops himself. He scrubs a hand down his face, then throws his arms up as in defeat. “How am I ever going to get it if you don’t tell me?” he says, calmer.

Rose groans, pushing a hand through her hair.

“Rose –” The Doctor reaches for her.

“There’s drugs in it!” she finally blurts out. The Doctor recoils, both his arm and his face falling sharply. “You’re... you’re _high_! Didn’t you notice that? Doesn’t your enormous Time Lord brain realise something’d bloody off?”

The Doctor goes completely still. The confusion and frustration on his face flutter away, leaving his expression completely blank. He stares off into space, his eyes narrowing just slightly. It’s a look she’s seen before, a look she knows well. He’s conducting some internal analysis. It’s something he makes a habit of doing, but Rose swears half the time it’s just to show off he can. It’s not just on himself either, it’s a parlour trick he uses on Rose, too. Spouting off her heart rate, telling her she needs to eat more iron. It’s infuriating.

When he comes back to himself with whatever information he’s found, his shoulders slump. His jaw goes slack.

“You’re right,” he murmurs. “Phenylpiperazine. I’m swimming in it.”

“And you didn’t figure that out before?” Her voice edges on hysterical, all the frustration of the evening beginning to spill over.

The Doctor frowns. “Must be one of the side effects, I suppose. Dulls my ability to detect it.”

“You don’t feel weird?” she asks.

“I feel... I dunno.” He sighs, thinking. “Fine. Good, even.”

“Well, why d’you think so many people turn to drugs,” Rose mutters.

“I’m burning through it. Half life is only about...” he squeezes one eye closed briefly, collecting more information. “Thirty minutes. I should clear it out within a couple of hours.”

“Well, why don’t you just lie down, then,” she says. “Sleep it off. You can take the bed, I’ll sleep here on the couch.”

“But Rose.” The Doctor crosses his arms. “None of this explains why you’re cross with me.”

“Because!” she exclaims. “You’re not supposed to be so... oblivious! You’re supposed to know when something’s mucking about with your head.”

“I didn’t know,” he insists pointedly. “If _you_ knew, why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I dunno!” Rose grumbles. “I was just... out of sorts, I suppose, after you –” She bites her lip before she can say it.

“What? Kissed you?” Rose doesn’t answer, dropping her eyes down to his shoes. “You _are_ upset about that, aren’t you?”

Despite how insane this situation is, how pear-shaped it’s all gone, the idea of the Doctor actually going on thinking that, that she’d be _upset_ that he kissed her, it’s too revolting. It twists like a knife in her heart. She can’t let him believe that.

“Not that it happened,” she says. “That once you sober up you’ll pretend it didn’t.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment, gaze shifting between her and the floor. Re-processing. “I won’t,” he says.

“You will,” she counters.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

His face scrunches up in irritation. She knew that would get him.

“Look,” he says. “The bed is plenty big. Why don’t we share it?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Not like we haven’t done it before.” It’s true, but they’ve never done it when he was in such a... _snogging_ mood. “C’mon. You can make sure I don’t forget. Hm?”

Goddamn him and those brown golden retriever eyes.

“Fine.”

He throws his coat and jacket over a chair, pulls off his tie, undoes a few buttons on his shirt. Wrestles off his trainers. Then he throws himself on one side of the bed. Really, it’s rather small to be meant for two. Though she guesses, given they’re supposed to be married and they both at least _look_ quite young, it’s a room geared towards more amorous couples.

Rose doesn’t shut off the lamp by the bed. In the light, Rose thinks she can behave. Darkness would only provide concealment for all the sinful thoughts running through her head. Thoughts that the sight of the Doctor sprawled out on a bed is certainly not helping to go away. Rose lies on the opposite edge, but even so, there’s only about six inches between them.

The Doctor, at least, doesn’t encroach on her space. He expels a deep breath up at the ceiling, closing his eyes. “Whew. I’m knackered.”

“Sure you’ll be a different person when you wake up.”

His brow crumples angrily. “Planning to kill me in my sleep, are you?” he mumbles.

Rose ignores the attempt at a joke.

He doesn’t try again. Within a few minutes, he’s asleep. Chest steadily rising and falling. Lips gently parted. The lines of tension on his face smoothed out. 

He’s so peaceful in his sleep, innocent and vulnerable in a way his previous self could never quite manage. He so easily passes for a human.

She finds herself just watching him for a while, passing the minutes lost in guilty fantasies about his mouth. The vivid memory of it pressed warm against hers, his bottom lip captured softly in hers.

Oh, and out of all the things the change had brought about, his hair is one of the best. Playful and so touchable...

Oops.

Somehow, Rose’s hand has ended up atop his head.

When had she done that? _Why_ had she done that?

She should let go, right now. This is so not a good idea if she ever hopes to come back from this.

But it’s so nice. Soft and chaotic and _alive_ , springing back pliantly behind her touch thanks to his magical hair products. It tickles between her fingers as she gently combs through it.

Rose sighs, and somehow it comes out as his name. Two syllables of lament and longing.

The Doctor hums softly, almost as if he’s acknowledging it...

“You should do this more often,” he says.

Rose startles, yanking her hand back. “I thought you were asleep,” she says, the words strangled.

“I was,” he murmurs. “Tend to wake up when someone touches me.”

“Sorry.”

“Why?” His eyes are still closed, but he reaches out his arm blindly, searching for her hand. He finally finds her wrist and guides it back to his head. “I liked it.”

Rose’s heart is beating so fast it will surely give out soon.

He grins lazily in victory and it’s _not fair._ How can he do this to her?

_Well,_ she sighs. Might as well enjoy this while it lasts.

“Most do this more often,” he mumbles.

He leans into her touch as a really, _really_ gorgeous sound catches in his throat: one that floods her with heat yet makes her shiver. Her toes curl, her fingers clench in his hair.

Maybe Rose is wrong. Maybe the Doctor won’t pretend this didn’t happen. Maybe this will be the start of something fantastic.

Rose wakes with her cheek pressed against silky soft sheets, overheated beneath a heavy duvet. Lifting one eyelid, there’s grey mountains out a sunny window – she’s not in her room on the TARDIS, then.

Remembrance sparks through her. She lifts up onto her elbow and, bleary-eyed, searches the bed for the Doctor. But there’s only mussed up sheets and sunken pillow where he’d once been.

Looking around the suite, she sees the door is wide open, like it’d been left in a hurry.

Rose sits up, and leans over to bury her head in her hands. Of course he’d gone in a hurry. He’s probably fled to the TARDIS and flown off to the furthest galaxy he could find. Rubbing her eyes with a groan, she wonders whether to even bother looking for him.

“Finally up, are you?”

Rose snaps up. It was the Doctor’s voice, she’s sure of it. But where?

She searches the room more carefully. There – the tips of his hair poking up above the back of a chair.

“What’re you doing?” she asks. It’s not what she’d meant to say, but it’s what came out.

“Breakfast,” he says. He stands up – he’s fully dressed, save for his coat. His hair freshly styled. He licks something off his thumb, and there’s a cup in one hand.

“Is that –”

“Water,” the Doctor interrupts, holding it up. “Just water.”

Rose sighs in relief.

The Doctor picks up a tray from beside the chairs by the window, bringing it over to the bed. It’s filled with fruit and pastries.

“It’s gone a bit cold. Brought it back hours ago.”

Rose pours herself a glass of water. It could be better – it’s lukewarm and tastes funny from sitting stagnant – but her parched throat is still grateful.

The Doctor is... different. The vulnerability is gone from his eyes. There’s that familiar unyielding authority in them as he watches her sip her water.

She dreads asking question she needs to ask. She already knows the answer.

“So,” she says, steeling herself. “Are we pretending?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer for a long while. He stares down at her with his mouth half-open like he’s about to, like he’s just trying to find the words, but in the end, he turns away. Pushes his hands into his pockets, steps toward the window, and stares out at the lake.

That glass of water settles nauseatingly in Rose’s stomach.

“May have to take the nibbles to go,” he says. “Long walk back to the TARDIS.”


End file.
